


The Ride

by QueenOfCarrotFlowers



Series: Carrot's Dark Stories [11]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Sex, Attempted Necrophilia, Blood and Gore, Cockwarming, Come Marking, Consensual Somnophilia, Cutting, Dirty Talk, Domestic Violence, Drug Use, F/M, Femdom, HEA, Hair Braiding, Hitchhiking, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Knife Kink, Knifeplay, Knives, Murder, Necrophilia Kink, Needles, No Pregnancy, Pegging, Praise Kink, RVing, Rope Bondage, Safe to Read if You're Triggered by Pregnancy, Self-Harm, Serial Killers, Unsafe Sex, fleeting suicidal ideation, mention of human trafficking, misogynistic language, no necrophilia happens in the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:07:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 55,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25234402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfCarrotFlowers/pseuds/QueenOfCarrotFlowers
Summary: While he’s sitting at the edge of the parking lot, cataloging his woes, the door of the restaurant opens and the woman from the corner pushes her way out, styrofoam cup clutched in her right hand. She’s wearing jean cutoffs and a pink tank top over a green one, with scruffy leather cowboy boots at the end of her long, lean legs. Her hair, mousy brown, is styled in three little buns in a line down the back of her head, but they’re messy, with stray hairs flying around her neck and forehead. He thinks about bouncing one of them in his palm, and wills his cock to stay still.Ben Solo's life is falling apart. When a strange woman offers him a ride, he believes she's giving him exactly what he needs to start over. But she is also on the run, and she has plans of her own.A Serial Killer Hitchhiking AUin which Ben is a touch-starved, touch-averse necrophile, and Rey wants tolive.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Carrot's Dark Stories [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1170431
Comments: 762
Kudos: 305
Collections: Galactic Idiots Collection, Reylo After Dark, Reylo Pegging Fics





	1. The Escape

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt on Twitter](https://twitter.com/galacticidiots/status/1272206086423052288?s=20) from galacticidiots:
> 
> She’s standing by a stop sign. Light smile, heavy accent. “Going north?”  
> Ben nods. “Hop in.”  
> Her eyes flash with something like victory. 
> 
> He’s a serial killer who murders hitchhikers. She’s a serial killer who murders the people who pick her up. 
> 
> An unconventional love story.
> 
> A general warning that necrophilia plays a major role in the plot and there's not really any judgment made about it either by the characters or by the author. If you are triggered or squicked by necrophilia (sex with dead bodies) or if you're looking to kinkshame please don't read this. 
> 
> Update on 8/30: I updated the tags to specify more clearly that no necrophilia actually happens in the fic. There is an attempt, and Ben thinks about it a lot (including memories of things he's done) but it doesn't happen in the course of the story.
> 
> The Rape/Noncon content warning refers both to discussions of necrophilia throughout and to something specific that will happen in chapter six. 
> 
> I aim for comprehensiveness with the tags, but if you have specific squicks or triggers please check the content warnings which I'll place at the endnotes for each chapter. Let me know if there's anything else I should tag / warn for in a comment, or [DM me on Twitter](https://twitter.com/flowerofcarrots) or anonymously on [CuriousCat](https://curiouscat.qa/flowerofcarrots) if you have specific questions.
> 
> One million thanks to flypaper_brain, beta extraordinaire, for going along on this trip with me. I couldn't do it without her.
> 
> This is going to be pretty dark, although it will end happily for Rey and Ben.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meet cute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains fleeting suicidal ideation. It's in the second paragraph (which begins "There’s a patch of woods...") and it's fine to skip. Additional content warnings, all of which are covered by the tags, in the endnotes.

The fries at the bottom of the bag are getting cold and soggy, but Ben hardly notices. He’s sitting on the curb at the edge of the McDonald’s parking lot, long legs folded uncomfortably out in front of him, slowly eating one fry after another. Dip into the bag, pull out a fry, shove it in his mouth, chew, swallow, repeat. He’d usually sprinkle on some pepper first, dip them in ketchup, but his current physical situation isn’t conducive to ketchup, and he barely tastes them anyway, so plain it is. Hell, he usually wouldn’t eat fries at all, he’d opt instead for a salad, something reasonably healthy. At the moment he doesn’t see the point.

There’s a patch of woods on the other side of the lot, just outside of the blaze of the sodium lights that bathe the cars in a sickly orange glow, and that’s where his gaze is focused; a tiny bit of wilderness in the middle of Interstate 95. It’s inviting; he can almost hear it calling to him. He could go there, right now. Stand up and walk across the parking lot, step into the trees. It’s hot out here, even without the sun, and Ben’s sweating through the cashmere sweater he insists on wearing even when it’s over ninety degrees outside. It’s probably cool in the woods. He could lay down there, find a friendly looking tree and take a nap. If he’s lucky he won’t wake up. He’s heard a song about something like that, he’s pretty sure.

A shout and the slam of a car door at the Bob Evans next door has him shaking that thought right out of his head, and he forces himself back to reality. Ben needs a ride. He considers the options. The cars are clustered near the front door, nobody wants to walk through the heat; every step counts. There aren’t many options. There’s a grey sedan, normally inconspicuous but it has a substantial dent in the driver’s side door which would make it immediately identifiable. A couple of the cars are red - definitely a no. The last one is a blue station wagon. That one’s promising, but Ben saw the family arrive, a harried-looking middle-aged woman with four kids, and he can’t bring himself to leave them carless. Never mind that it's all an intellectual exercise; Ben Solo has no idea how to go about stealing a car. He really doesn’t want to spend time with another person right now but if he wants to keep moving he doesn’t have much of a choice.

At the farthest end of the parking lot, parked by itself and half-hidden by the building, is an RV. Ben doesn’t know much about RVs but this one looks nice, it has a flat front and brown and black stripes… can RVs have racing stripes? That seems weird. He isn’t sure but he thinks the RV belongs to the woman who was sitting in the corner when he went in to order his dinner. She's the reason he's out here, crouching on the crumbling concrete in sweltering heat, instead of inside at an air-conditioned booth. She'd looked at him when he came in and hadn't stopped looking until he'd left. He had felt her gaze, hot and heavy, an itching behind his eyes. He'd glanced back at her a couple of times as he waited for his Quarter Pounder with Cheese and his fries, and both times she'd been staring straight at him. It had been unnerving. Did she recognize him? Did she _know_? How could she possibly know? Or did she find him attractive? That possibility was worse. It made his fingers twitch and the food churn unpleasantly in his stomach.

Ben reaches back into the bag and comes back empty - no more fries. He crumples the bag and drops it to the ground by his feet where it joins the burger wrapper and the paper cup, formerly full of Coke, which he’d finished far too quickly. He’s running out of time. He can’t stay here forever. He has to do _something_ and his options are sorely limited. He has no car - he’d deserted his Tesla at a travel plaza just over the Delaware border, and had only managed to hitch a ride this far because he’d found a trucker who needed some cash. But now he’s here, off Interstate 95 in Trenton, New Jersey, and despite having had a couple of years to plan for this eventuality Ben Solo has no real idea of what he’s supposed to do next.

The thing is, since 3:58pm, exactly - Ben checks his Breitling Premier Norton Edition - five hours and four minutes ago, Ben has been _on the run_. It was Mitaka’s fault, Mitaka who managed the drug testing in the forensics lab. Mitaka had called him to let him know - quite literally the very least he could do. Years of friendship meant nothing, apparently. Ben pokes at his trash while he thinks about Mitaka. Dopheld Mitaka, who’s been supplying Ben with fentanyl, codeine, morphine, ketamine - not so useful now - heroin in a pinch. It’s Mitaka who got found out, and Mitaka who decided to roll over on Ben instead of defending him.

Ben had been in his campus office preparing for his 4:30 class when he got the call. “I wanted to at least warn you,” Mitaka had whispered hurriedly over the phone. “I knew the new lab management would be doing an audit, but I had no idea they would be so thorough. The losses are going to come to me.” Ben had begged, he’d pleaded, he’d offered money to Mitaka, a lot of it, but the man was adamant. “I’m going to lose my job, Ben, I’ll be lucky if Kay doesn’t leave me. I can’t take the hit for you. You’re on your own.” Mitaka had hung up the phone without saying goodbye and he hadn’t answered it again. It didn’t matter now, because Ben had tossed his own phone into the Potomac River on his way past Washington DC. It had been hard to do, but it was one less way for the authorities to track him down. 

It wasn’t the drugs that were the problem for Ben, not exactly. If it was as simple as a drug addiction that would be one thing, he could deal with it. Maybe he’d be forced to go on leave, spend some months in rehab. He could live off his trust fund. It would be embarrassing but he might even come out on top - he’d hit the bottom and then bounce back, better than ever. But Ben wasn’t a drug addict, he was barely even a user, and if the authorities came looking for those drugs, there was no way they wouldn’t be able to put the pieces of the puzzle together and discover Ben’s real addiction. The missing drugs, the women, and he was the only thing tying them together. 

While he’s sitting there cataloging his woes the door of the restaurant opens and the woman from the corner pushes her way out, styrofoam cup clutched in her right hand. She’s wearing jean cutoffs and a pink tank top over a green one, with scruffy leather cowboy boots at the end of her long, lean legs. Her hair, mousy brown, is styled in three little buns in a line down the back of her head, but they’re messy, with stray hairs flying around her neck and forehead. He thinks about bouncing one of them in his palm as he injects a syringe full of fentanyl into her neck, and wills his cock to stay still. She’s not his type - she’s too tall, too skinny, too sloppy, too young - but it still makes his gorge rise as she hops off the sidewalk and crosses the asphalt towards him. He struggles to stay calm, pushes his glasses up his nose to give his hands something to do, as she makes a beeline for where he’s crouching in the dirty asphalt, on the edge of the lamplight.

“Hey there,” she says, stopping a few feet away. From this close he can discern the strong muscles under the tanned skin of her arms, and the freckles dancing across her nose and cheeks, a few on her shoulders. She pauses to suck the straw, the sound is loud and echoes around the lot. Her quiet burp is punctuation, her mumbled _‘scuse me_ is automatic. “Need a ride?”

“What makes you think I need a ride?” He knows he sounds rude, he’s being rude, because he doesn’t want to be _here_ , not near her, and he doesn’t want to run away. He _wants_ to go back to Delaware and pick up his Tesla so he can drive home to his nice house in Charlottesville’s historic district with the roses he’s tended to since he moved there five years before. He wants his position as a professor at a respected university, he wants his consulting post with the FBI, he wants to be invited to present keynote speeches at international conferences. These things are his and he’s spent his entire life working to get where he is and now it’s all over because he also wants to drive to DC a couple of times a month and pick up women in bars and do that thing that he knows is wrong but which brings him so much pleasure, so much relief. He'd thought he could do both and it’s been five hours and ten minutes since he discovered that he can’t so if he sounds rude he thinks that’s a pretty damn good excuse.

But she smiles at him, like he’s told a good joke. “What makes me think you need a ride? Okay.” The _smartass_ is left unstated, but he knows she’s thinking it. “First of all, I saw you come in earlier. You got out of a semi over at the Shell station and you walked over here without a glance over your shoulder. And honey, you may be many things but you are definitely not a trucker. I know truckers.” Her voice is pleasant, lilting, and she speaks with a drawl; he guesses she’s from Texas. She chews on the end of her straw. It’s cute, and he hates it. “Anyway, you walked right into this here McDonald’s, your fancy shoes covered with dust and that duffle bag over your shoulder and that watch on your wrist that costs at least, what, five thousand dollar? Six? That looks to me like a guy who needs a ride.”

She’s right, of course, and smarter than she looks. It’s dangerous, but good to know. Ben tugs the cuff of his sweater over his watch and smiles at her, despising the unfamiliar stretch of lips over teeth. He hopes he doesn’t look too weird doing it, but her smile grows too, as though they’re sharing something special, so he figures he did pretty well with it.

“I guess you have me all figured out. I do need a ride. Do you have an offer?”

She twists sideways and gestures backwards with her cup-holding hand. “The Winnebago, that’s my grandpa’s, he loaned it to me?” She says it like it’s a question, which is a bit strange, but maybe that’s just the way she talks. “It’s a 2008 Sightseer with a lot of special options. It has plenty of room, and real good AC.” There’s a note of pride in her voice. What a girl like her is doing driving a fancy RV around New Jersey is anybody’s guess, but Ben doesn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth; this is an excellent turn of events in an otherwise shit of a day. This is his way out. He can do his thing with her and take her RV. With reliable transportation and his fake identification he can cross the border to Mexico, and then he’ll be free. Things are really looking up.

“What do you want for it?”

“Want?” She licks her lips, and there’s that smile again. “Why, I desire nothing more than the pleasure of your company. Anything beyond that, you give me by choice. Okay?” 

He chooses to ignore her tone. “Okay,” he says, and slowly unfolds himself to standing. She keeps her eyes on him as he does so, and he takes pleasure in how her eyes widen as he reaches his full height. She’s impressed, he thinks, maybe a little afraid, and he allows himself to preen internally for a few seconds. He lifts the duffle bag from the asphalt and shoulders it. It’s stuffed full but he doesn’t think it looks too suspicious. He’d switched out the wallets in Delaware, and checked for his fake documents, so he knows he’s set, but he pats the pocket anyway, just to be sure. The woman looks at the ground and sighs, and stoops down to pick up his discarded trash.

“Where are you headed?” He asks as he follows her across the parking lot. She shrugs.

“I been driving around for a bit. I don’t have a plan, really, so I can take you anywhere. Where do you need to go?”

This is almost too good. Ben’s unfamiliar smile spreads into a grin.

“That’s very kind of you. I have a friend who lives in the Ozarks, I was thinking about staying with him for a while.”

She tilts her head and narrows her eyes. “You’re hitchhiking for a vacation?”

“Not a vacation. I lost my job this week, decided it was time to leave. Start over.” He wasn’t expecting questions and his answer sounds ridiculous as it falls out of his mouth. There’s no way she’s going to buy this explanation, she’s going to tell him to fuck off, she’s going to walk by herself across the parking lot to her Winnebago and then he’s going to have to chase after her, he’s going to have to kidnap her and that… that’s an attractive idea in its own way. He holds his breath as he waits for her to suck down the last dredges of her milkshake.

“That sounds nice, starting over,” she finally says, a little wistfully, and Ben lets out his breath with relief, and a little bit of disappointment. “We’ll head west, then. Okay?”

“West. That’s your neck of the woods, isn’t it. Your, uh,” he gestures at his mouth, and she gives him the stink eye.

“I am well aware of my Texan twang, fancy man in a sweater, I don’t need you making fun. I can leave you here, if you’d rather?”

He holds his hands up in surrender and she takes the opportunity to shove the trash at him. He takes it, careful to avoid touching the skin of her hands, holds the wad of paper to his chest.

“I wouldn’t dream of making fun of you. Anyway, I like your accent. It’s uh-” she gives him another dark look that kills the word _cute_ on the tip of his tongue. His cheeks flame, and hot anger pushes behind his eyes. He imagines her, limp in his arms with her lips turning blue, and that calms him down. “Never mind.” 

By this point they’ve reached the side door of the RV. Ben can see that it really is an impressive ride, maybe 40 feet long, with storage lockers all around the bottom. It’s like something a rock band would use for a tour bus. The woman fumbles in her pocket for the key.

“This is really nice. What does your grandfather do?”

She fumbles a little more before answering. “Oh, he’s a doctor, a real fancy one. Does surgery and stuff. He bought this for vacations but since I’m out of school for the summer, he said I could drive it around wherever I want to.” Ben is almost entirely sure she’s not telling the truth, but again - gift horse, mouth. It doesn’t matter anyway, she’s not going to last long. She pulls open the door and turns back to face him.

“If you’re gonna ride with me, we should know each other’s names. I’m Kira, Kira Johnson.” She holds out her hand for him to shake. He imagines her with dead eyes, face blank. No more hope, only vacant stillness, all for him. His heart flutters, and he grabs her hand.

“I’m Kylo,” he answers. “Kylo Ren.” The sensation of her palm pressed against his makes his skin crawl, and he lets go as quickly as he can.

Giving Ben a satisfied nod Kira steps up into the Winnebago, and Ben follows, wiping his palm against his trousers so hard it burns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: Mention of drug use; Ben imagines what Rey will look like dead; Ben imagines having to forcibly kidnap Rey**
> 
> [Rey's Winnebago](https://youtu.be/e97GYtosbCM)


	2. The First Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously on _The Ride_ :
> 
> Rey and Ben met at McDonald's.  
> Ben accepted a ride in Rey's granddad's Winnebago.  
> Ben is planning to "do his thing" with Rey and drive her Winnebago to Mexico.
> 
> Thanks so much for the kudos and the feedback, your reactions are so gratifying. And three cheers as always to flypaper_brain for the beta and for being generally amazing.
> 
> Chapter Two presents the first day of travel, and Rey and Ben - pardon me, Kira and Kylo - getting to know each other, this time from her point of view.
> 
> Content warnings in endnotes.

Once they’re in the RV Rey throws the trash in the small plastic bin behind the driver’s seat while Kylo drops his bag on the chair to the right of the top of the stairs. It was a dick move, leaving his trash on the ground and acting offended when she made him carry it, but Rey thinks it’s funny. Whatever else is up with this Kylo guy, he takes himself far too seriously, which means that Rey can have some fun with him before she takes care of him. She watches as he peers back to check out the vehicle. He frowns, and Rey has to hold in a smile. He looks so annoyed.

“This is a lot tighter than I thought it would be.” He gestures to where the sofa sits just 18 inches from the front of the kitchen cabinet and runs his right hand through his hair while he sets his left hand on his hip, sighing as though all the troubles of the world rest on his shoulders. Rey wonders if the thing with the hair is something he does a lot, a kind of nervous tic. She likes it. She wants to make him do it again; it amuses her. He has amused her, very much, since the moment she first laid eyes on him. But when he turns around to look at her his eyes are dark, maybe a little dangerous - not like they were outside - and she doesn’t really want to push him. The knife’s in her boot, but she’d rather not have to bring it out quite so early in their acquaintance. So she gives him her brightest smile and explains.

“I’ll extend out the sides once we’re parked, so there’ll be a lot more space. There’s bunk beds in the back, too, across from the bathroom, and they also extend out. It’s just folded in for the ride. Okay?” Kylo grunts and turns back to her.

“Where should I sit?”

“Passenger side, I guess,” she answers, and he stands still and waits for her to take her place in the driver’s seat before he moves. She checks the side mirrors and the cameras and then starts the engine while Kylo folds himself into the passenger seat, grumbling while he figures out how to push the seat back. He’s a lot taller than Mrs Bergman, who was the last person to occupy that seat. The Bergmans never let Rey sit up front.

They pull out of the parking lot and Rey carefully makes her way back up to the interstate, turning left across the facing traffic to head south. Kylo remains quiet and keeps to himself, staring out the window, arms folded tight across his chest, knuckles pressed against his lips. He’s taken his glasses off, and they hang from his collar. The brake lights of the cars around them illuminate his skin a demonic red and reflect off the lenses of his glasses. Rey steals occasional glances at him out of the corner of her eye. He doesn’t look at her at all, he seems to be completely lost in his own head. She knows he’s lied to her, and she wonders what his secret is. She hopes it’s something interesting. 

He doesn’t remember her but she’d noticed him hours before, when she’d stopped to get gas at the travel plaza in Delaware. He’d been driving a Tesla, one of the newest models, a sleek black thing, and instead of parking close to the building he’d parked all the way out, under some overhanging trees. Parking away from the building wasn’t too strange - she knew that rich people could be really weird about their cars - but she’d thought doing it under trees was a bit weird. Birds live in trees, and birds shit on cars, and that’s not great, is it? Anyway, he was far from the main building but close to the gas station, and she’d had a pretty good view of him from the pump. The sight of a tall man with long dark hair dressed all in black and digging around in the trunk of a Tesla is not something that Rey sees every day. The thing that had ticked her off the most about him was that he was wearing a sweater. _What kind of asshole wears a sweater in the middle of summer,_ she’d thought to herself as she held the handle of the pump and watched him.

The trunk of the car had been open. They guy had tossed his black leather wallet into the depths of the car like it was nothing, then pulled another wallet, identical to the first, out of a pocket on the side of his duffle bag and tucked it into his back pocket. Then he’d opened the big zipper at the top of the duffle and had done something - whether he was putting something in or taking something out she couldn’t tell - and then just before he’d closed the trunk he’d tossed in a fob, which she assumed was his key. He’d shouldered that huge bag like it was nothing and wandered away, towards where the semi trucks were parked on the other side of the lot, but by that point the RV tank had filled, and she’d tried to forget about him until the moment he walked into the McDonalds two hours later and she took it as a sign.

He’s _interesting_ , that’s the thing, and Rey has been so bored, bored for ages, even when she’d been riding with the Bergmans she’d been bored. She wants to know what’s up with him. His car and his clothes are fancy but he looks like shit, like he needs a haircut and a shave, a bath and a hard fuck. A drug addict, that’s her first guess. She’s known more than her fair share of them in her short life, and there’s something about his aspect - how he curls his shoulders forward and turns his feet together like he’s trying to make himself inconspicuous, or maybe just smaller. How his hair falls into his face, the dark circles under his eyes - all of these things are unpleasantly familiar. But he isn't twitchy, his eyes aren’t blown out or bloodshot, and he seems lucid, although he’s certainly a bit grouchy. That’s okay though, Rey doesn’t mind grouchy; it’s so much more honest than fake nice.

He doesn’t have a cell phone, which is another interesting thing, though he keeps glancing down at his hands like he expects one to appear. 

It had been over a week since she’d dispatched the Bergmans, after Mr Bergman had finally made a pass at her - she’d been expecting it, he’d been giving her looks for days but she’d waited until he’d backed her into a corner and straight-up propositioned her - and it was getting a little bit lonely in the Winnebago. Kylo could provide company, maybe even _company_ , she wasn’t exactly dead-set against it - she’d thought about it as she watched him in the McDonalds, wiggling in her plastic seat at the thought of him taking her buns in his hand and kissing her, just as he’d looked back one more time at her. Did he know that she was wondering how his nose might feel pressed behind her ear, or between her legs? _God_ she really was too horny. Maybe creepy Kylo had cash she could use to buy herself a vibrator once he’d disappointed her. She’d had one, a nice one, but she’d lost it somewhere near Portland, and that had been a few months ago.

Rey maneuvers the hefty vehicle down the highway, though heavy traffic - it’s getting late but it’s a Friday night in the middle of summer - and thinks about her lost vibrator, and the knife in her boot, and how unfortunate it was that poor Mrs Bergman had to be married to such a creep. She thinks about Kylo, too, who sits silently next to her. Sometimes he naps, and sometimes he stares out the window, but whether his eyes are open or closed he remains completely silent. Around midnight - the time they hit DC - Rey’s eyes get heavy, but they have miles and miles to go, so she turns on the radio, tuning it to some local country station. Kylo is awake but he doesn’t even look at her; he’s turned the passenger seat of the Winnebago into his own little world. 

Rey knows the route by heart; south on Interstate 95, then west on State Route 20 to cut across to Interstate 64. They’ll go past Charlottesville - maybe stop for a pee and a snack, there’s a rest area just past the city that Rey knows well. Then they’ll take Interstate 81 south, all the way into Tennessee, and stop at the Tennessee Welcome Center just outside of Kingsport. There’s long term parking there; they’ll be able to sleep, and then Rey will be rested enough to come up with some kind of plan to deal with Kylo Ren. 

It takes an hour for the radio station from DC to fade, and as they turn onto Route 20 Rey starts flipping through the channels. It’s well after midnight so it’s mostly corporate fill-in music: there’s a late night call in show where a woman with a soft voice appears to be dedicating love songs - she moves past that one quick - and at the bottom of the dial there’s a local talk station. Rey listens for a moment, enough time to know it’s not something she cares for, but before she can touch the button to search up the dial Kylo reaches out and grabs her wrist.

She hadn’t realized he was awake, and the sudden contact of his skin makes her squeak. He lets her go immediately and apologizes.

“I’m sorry, but do you mind if we just listen to the talk radio for a while? The music was giving me a headache and this might be easier for me to tune out.”

“Sure,” Rey says with a shrug, and sits back into her seat, doing her best to ignore how he rubs his hand against his knee, as though trying to wipe off something dirty. She half pays attention as the people on the radio - a couple of people in the studio and a slow trickle of callers, all of whom seem familiar to the hosts - talk about local issues. There’s a bill to lower the cost of parking near the university campus, some building downtown that’s raising rents, and then spend a good fifteen minutes complaining about property taxes and why they have to be so damn high. Rey does her best to tune that out completely, choosing instead to remember the last time she’d taken this particular bit of Interstate 64. It had been a couple of months before - the days were shorter, and slightly cooler. She’d hitched a ride in upstate New York with a guy named JJ who drove a dirty pickup truck and stank of cigarettes and body odor. JJ had waited two whole days before he’d told her that if she wanted to keep riding with him she’d need to earn her keep, and did she know the nice truckers over on the other side of the rest area would be very willing to pay her for her time? She smiles, remembering the way he’d gurgled as he drowned in his own blood. That had been immensely satisfying, and it had happened very close to where they are currently driving.

Rey’s attention is brought back to the radio when she hears them say the word _murder_ , and for a moment she’s certain they’re talking about her, but then they go on to talk about some local guy who’s suspected of purposefully overdosing women with drugs procured at the university’s forensics lab, which is interesting but has nothing to do with Rey, so she goes back to ignoring it.

Kylo is napping again, and Rey reaches out and prods him when they’re about a mile from the rest area. He opens his eyes and stares at her, and she’s struck by how deep his eyes are.

“There’s a rest area just a mile ahead, I’m gonna stop, if that’s okay.”

Kylo looks out the window, as though he can see anything in the pitch dark, and he frowns.

“I’m hungry. Can we wait until we get to eighty-one, stop somewhere with real food?”

“Sure.” Rey doesn’t have to pee too bad, and she is always happy to eat. Maybe Kylo will even pay.

They end up stopping at a Denny’s. Once they’re parked Kylo says he’s tired and asks if she minds eating in the RV, handing her a shiny black card that he pulls out of his black leather wallet. The card is made of metal; it’s cool and heavy in her palm, and it has his name, KYLO REN, stenciled in silver letters on the front, the number - which Rey memorizes as she waits for their food - on the back. She uses the card to pay for his house salad with grilled chicken and her Grand Slam with bacon and pancakes, packed in styrofoam containers which the hostess hands to Rey in a plastic bag along with plastic forks and a handful of paper napkins. 

Rey and Kylo sit across from each other in the booth in the RV to eat. Rey knows that she eats like a horse, but although Kylo watches her carefully over the top of the black frames of his glasses he doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t get the sense that he’s judging her for her terrible manners. After ignoring her for hours he seems suddenly interested in her, and she wishes she could tell what exactly he was interested in. She’s decided he’s probably not a drug addict after all, he’s just tired, a little stressed. Maybe he’s thinking about ways that she could help him relieve some of that stress. She shovels forkfuls of pancake into her mouth and tries not to blush, and wonders what it would be like to fuck him, if he would welcome it, if he will eventually come to expect it. What she’ll have to do when that point arrives, as it inevitably will.

In no time they’re back on the road, and Kylo finds a top forties station that satisfies both of them. By this late the traffic is mostly just them and the semis, and Rey enjoys the drive through Virginia; up and over mountains that look soft in the dark, covered with trees. Kylo is quiet again, mostly staring out into the night. When the station fills with static it’s Kylo who takes the initiative to search around for something new to listen to, and he asks Rey if she’s okay when he finds something he likes. It’s nice a little bit of camaraderie, which she hasn’t had in a long time, a nice change from the first half of the drive. She’s almost disappointed when they finally cross the border to Tennessee and she takes the exit to the Welcome Center.

By the time they park it’s past six am and the sun has started to rise over the mountain. Rey shows Kylo how to extend the sides of the RV, and she’s a little bit disappointed when he elects to sleep on the fold-out at the front instead of in the bunk by the door to the room where she’ll sleep. She briefly considers inviting him in with her, but given how tired they both are that definitely means sleeping and not other things, and as interested as she may be in fucking this guy she’s not sure she’s ready to really _sleep_ with him. While she helps him fold out the sofa and brings him linens from the closet - a bit musty-smelling but clean - he barely glances at her anyway, so maybe he isn’t interested in her that way after all. She finishes in the bathroom and checks out the main room to see that Kylo is already wrapped in blankets, stretched diagonally across the mattress. She locks the bedroom door and tucks her knife under the pillow - regular precautions that she feels no need to overlook with the present company - wraps herself in her own blankets and, lullabied by the hum of the RV's air conditioning, falls asleep immediately.

🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️

Rey’s awakening is a sudden and vicious thing. Years spent with foster families and in group homes and the past few months hitching rides with terrible people has trained Rey to sleep very lightly. It can be annoying, especially when she’s awakened by things like shouts or slammed doors, but it’s times like this one that she recognizes her quickness to wake for what it is: it is a blessing.

Someone is crouched in the narrow space between the bed and the wall.

She throws the blanket aside and reaches under the pillow, pushing her fingers through the rings of her knife at the same time she launches herself up. The room has blackout curtains over the small window, but it’s bright outside and Rey can clearly see Kylo Ren on his knees beside her. He’s still dressed in what he was wearing earlier, including that stupid sweater, hair messy and eyes wild. His left hand is wrapped around a folded cloth, his right one holds something that makes her heart sink and her mouth water. There’s a scent in the air, something chemical and sweet, and it tastes bitter on the back of Rey’s tongue. Kylo’s wearing latex gloves and large goggles that fit over his glasses. Rey snarls and surges forward, barely pressing the blade, which extends from her fist to the outside of her arm, against his Adam's apple. She draws the sharp edge gently sideways to bring forth a thin red line across his skin, decorated by a trickle of blood. Kylo swallows, throat bobbing against the knife, but he doesn’t move otherwise. He stares at her, his eyes wide and full of shock. Rey wonders if he might cry; she hopes he does.

“You don’t get to do that to me,” Rey growls. And then she grins. This is more fun than she’s had in _ages_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: oblique references to murder; several mentions of blood; Rey pulls a knife on Ben, drawing a small amount of blood**
> 
> Rey's knife. We'll learn a little bit more about it in chapter three.  
> 
> 
> If you like how this is going, please check out my fic [_it is (not) so dreadful here_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21245747/chapters/50586440), a Hades & Persephone + 10 Cloverfield Lane AU in which Ben kidnaps Rey and gets way more than he bargained for.


	3. The Syringe and The Knife

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously on _The Ride_ :
> 
> Rey and Ben drove to Tennessee.  
> They bonded a little bit.  
> Rey woke up in the morning to discover Ben crouched by her bed.  
> She pulled a knife on him.
> 
> Content warnings in endnotes. Please note I have added Knife Kink to the tag list. A knife was always going to play a major role in this story but I have decided to make some of the knife mentions explicitly sexual. If you wish to avoid the knife kink in chapter three skip the paragraph that starts "What she does is slowly trail..."

Her blade is a Mark I trench knife. It’s more properly a dagger, with a double-edged blade useful for both thrusting and slashing strokes. Kira holds it like a dagger, clutched in her fist, pointing away from her body. She looks like she’s ready to stab. Ben recognizes the knife immediately, by the shape of the blade and by the brass knuckles incorporated into its handle. Although designed in 1918 it was made too late to be used in World War One, so this one wouldn’t have been issued until 1942 or 1943 if it was ever issued at all. The knuckles were designed to keep the knife from slipping out of the hand during close combat, and not for punching, although they could certainly be used for that purpose too. The tops of the iron knuckles, which face away from Kira's hand, have four sharp points that leave very distinctive marks when the weapon is wielded with a strong hand. Ben has seen marks from a knife like this one quite recently, and this realization brings a distinct sense of dread, along with a side helping of nausea. It’s possible that he has finally bitten off more than he can chew.

A drop of warm liquid rolls down to Ben’s collarbone and he realizes that Kira is speaking to him.

“Excuse me?” His eyes focus on her face. She’s grinning at him. She reminds him of a wolf; eyes wide, teeth bared, tensed up and ready to strike. She’d taken her hair down before going to bed and now, just like the rest of her, her hair is messy and wild. Perhaps she’ll drink his blood, or eat him. The thought both excites him and makes him feel ill.

“I said, drop the cloth and give me the syringe and maybe I won’t cut you deeper.” She speaks slowly and carefully, applying a touch more pressure to the blade she’s pressing against his throat, and reaches out with her left hand. A second drop of blood rolls down to his collarbone and he imagines her leaning down to lick it off of him. He’s afraid he might vomit. But he holds it down; he needs to think.

He could try to get the cloth to her face, but the ether wouldn’t work fast enough to knock her out before she cut him open. He could stick her. He might be able to fill her with the drug before she could finish cutting his throat open. But then he’d bleed out on the floor in a minute or so, and she’d be dead of an overdose in less than ten, which seems like a waste. He doesn’t want to go through the trouble of killing her if he can’t have her for himself after. He could, of course, hand over the syringe. Hopefully she won’t damage it; that would be devastating. Even if he gives it to her, she might kill him anyway. But she could’ve killed him already, without this theater, and she hasn’t. He’s curious why not. If she _is_ responsible for what he is beginning to suspect she’s responsible for, she’s well-versed with that knife and isn’t one to pull punches. 

For now he’ll do what he can to minimize her danger to him. Maybe if he’s cooperative she’ll keep him around, and he’ll have another opportunity to try with her later. He has no clue how to prove himself cooperative, even harmless, after _this_. She travels by herself; maybe she’s just lonely. He knows about being lonely, wishing for someone to understand you. He can try appealing to that part of her, if he can find it. 

He lets go of the cloth first, drops it to the ground. Then he holds the syringe needle-down and removes his thumb from the plunger, leaving it to hang on his fingers by the barrel flanges. She snatches it by the barrel and tugs it off his fingers, a sudden, almost violent move that makes him cringe. He lowers his right hand and sets it, palm down, next to his left one on the mattress.

Kira doesn’t move the knife, and Ben doesn’t dare move either. He sits as still as he can and watches her turn the syringe over and around in her hand while she frowns at it. It’s a beautiful thing, shining metal and glass, still in perfect condition; the needle is original. He cleans it after each kill, cares for it like nothing else he owns. It was Grandfather’s and Grandfather trusted it to him, and every time he uses it he feels closer to him. A man he loved and admired, who he was never quite good enough to please, no matter how hard he tried. And now Grandfather is dead, and he’ll never have another chance. 

Ben distracts himself with Kira. She’s still gazing at the syringe, her eyebrows pulled together, and a twinge of regret that he wasn’t successful earlier spikes though his heart, accompanied by a roiling sickness in his belly. She should be _dead_ ; he should be _fucking_ her. He hadn’t considered that she would sleep so lightly or wake up so quickly, much less that she’d have a trench knife under her pillow. Things to remember for next time.

“What is this thing? It’s ancient.”

“It’s a syringe, and it’s not that old. It still works.”

“How old?” She sounds skeptical, but she also sounds interested. _Interested_. Like a good student. Of course, a woman who sleeps with a Mark I trench knife under her pillow must have some interest in history.

“One hundred and fifty years, more or less. Circa eighteen-seventy.”

She bites her lip. “That’s real old. Why are you using it, instead of something newer?”

“I don’t know,” he says, irritated to the point of brashness. “Why are you using a Mark One trench knife instead of something newer?”

Kira doesn’t flinch but her eyes flick up to his, narrowed. The tip of her tongue darts out to wet her lips. “I use it because it’s what I have.” Disappointment rises along with disgust. _It’s what she has_. So much for being an interested student. 

“That syringe belonged to my grandfather. He collected medical objects.”

“Did he use it? Is he a doctor? Are you a doctor?”

“He didn’t use it, as far as I know. And yes, he is a doctor. Was. A surgeon, in Baltimore, a very well known one. Doctor Anakin Skywalker? He performed the first successful heart transplant in the United States.” Ben is proud of his grandfather, of his accomplishments and his name recognition, but Kira’s expression is blank. He tries very hard to appear unconcerned with her ignorance. “Anyway. I’m not a doctor, although I have a medical degree.”

She curls her lip. “But doctors make so much money. Why would you have a medical degree and not be a doctor? That sounds dumb.”

“Figured out something else I wanted to do more.”

“Okay,” she says, but she doesn’t ask him any more about himself. He wishes she would, and he hates himself for wanting her attention. He bites his lip to keep himself from saying more.

Instead, she turns her attention back to the syringe.

“What’s in it?” 

“Two hundred and fifty milligrams of fentanyl.” 

“Fentanyl, is that the dog drug?”

 _Dog drug_. “I think you’re thinking of ketamine. It’s a general anaesthetic. Fentanyl is an opiate.”

She glances up at him. “What, you were gonna get me high?”

Ben watches her face carefully, to gauge her reaction. “Two hundred and fifty milligrams is a lethal dose.”

“Lethal. You mean… kill?”

“Yes.”

“You were gonna kill me.”

“Yes.”

She smiles, a mischievous thing. Ben didn’t expect her to smile at the revelation that she came so close to death. “Is two hundred and fifty milligrams enough to kill _you_?”

A wave of panic surges through Ben but the knife against his throat keeps him still. Kira must notice him shaking, though, because she tuts and licks her lips.

“Guess that’s a yes.”

Ben imagines being killed by his own fentanyl, injected into him using his own syringe, _Grandfather’s_ syringe, by this terrible woman who seems to be completely unafraid of him, and finds the thought terrifying. _He_ is the one who does the killing; he’s not the one who’s supposed to die. He doesn’t want to die. All he can do now is stare at her; she stares back at him and he is overwhelmed with disappointment with himself for his most recent failure. She’d be so beautiful, dead and naked. A corner of his brain insists that she’s beautiful anyway, but Ben shoves that thought far away and ignores it.

Kira hums, and then shouts as she shoves the plunger down against the mattress, giggling as a thin stream of liquid flies out of the needle and straight up into the air, dousing them both. Ben can’t stop himself from yelling, angry at the waste and the mess, but Kira is entranced by the fountain and doesn’t even look at him.

“It won’t be killing either of us now,” she says once the barrel is empty, lifting the sharp edge of the blade away from Ben’s skin. He takes a breath and exhales, releasing more tension than he thought he was holding, but then the flat edge of the blade presses under his chin. “Stand up.” Ben does as she asks, following the knife as a guide to turn his face away from the bed. She pushes his shoulder down with her left hand, which still grips the cylinder of the syringe. He sits back on the mattress and settles for a moment before slowly turning towards her, resting his right knee on the bed. She holds the knife low, pointed at his gut. He lifts his fingers to his neck, and they come back shiny and red.

“I’ll give you a band-aid when we’re done, if you want one.”

“Thank you,” he says, wondering what she means by “done”.

She seems completely calm. Even though she looks a bit wild - hair messy, eyes wide, and her teeth, oh her teeth, like those of an animal - her breathing is steady and her eyes aren’t unusually dilated. She doesn’t seem to be hit with any more adrenaline than when she was eating her meal earlier. He wonders if holding him at knifepoint was the equivalent of a meal to her. Being threatened with two hundred and fifty milligrams of fentanyl was the appetizer, drawing his blood was the main course. What would be the dessert? Bile rises at the back of Ben’s throat and he swallows it down with a grimace.

“Were you planning to kill me, Kylo?” She asks after several moments of uncomfortable silence.

“Yes.” There’s no point in lying now, he thinks.

“Why?” 

Instead of answering, Ben looks at her face. Her skin is tanned and freckled, slightly darker on the left side from spending so many daylight hours behind the wheel. Her lips are pink, plush, and her eyes shine with what he expects is amusement. He takes a moment to imagine her as she’d be if he’d been successful. The pallor of her skin, blue tinge of her lips, dark spots just beginning to form under her eyes. She was quite pretty, but in death she’d be exquisite, and most importantly she’d be _his_. She wouldn’t be able to kill him, or leave him, or anything else. The defeat he feels is almost suffocating in its intensity. 

“Kylo?” Her lips move, her voice bringing him back to the present. The corner of her mouth twitches. “Were you planning to take my Winnebago? Steal it from me, after I was so nice to you and gave you a ride?”

“You threatened me with your knife!” He counters, even though he knows it’s ridiculous; she throws her head back and laughs. By the time she’s calm enough to speak he realizes he could have attempted to grab the blade from her while she was distracted, but he didn’t even consider it. Her laugh is like music, a joyful song, but the melody tastes bitter in his mouth. 

“Don’t be silly,” she finally says. “I only pulled the knife because you were gonna dose me with fentanyl.”

“You weren’t going to use it otherwise?”

Her left eyebrow raises just a bit, and there’s that mischievous smile again. “I didn’t say that. I always use it eventually, because I always end up having a reason to use it. I don’t know if you know it, but one thing that all women know is that men are completely predictable. So perhaps it’s just as well we find ourselves in this predicament, Kylo Ren. Now that this is out of the way,” she waves the syringe and knife between them, “we can come to some sort of agreement.”

He can’t help himself. “You’ll give me the syringe back?” 

“You’re so funny! No. I’m gonna hold on to this. And that big bag of yours too, which I’m guessing has more drugs, but no more syringes. Am I right?” 

She’s right, and he hates it. “Why would you think that?”

“Because you strike me as the kind of man who does things in very particular ways,” she says, as she sits back, relaxing slightly. "You’re a mess right now, but I don’t think you’re usually a mess. You’re only a mess because you’re not in control of the situation. I think normally, when you’re in control, you take good care of yourself. You eat well, you wear expensive clothes - that _fucking sweater_ , for example. You work out and you probably have an assistant who drops off your dry cleaning every Wednesday or some shit like that. This thing you do, with the needles and the drugs,” she waves the syringe around again, “you’re particular about that, too. And if you have this antique syringe that belonged to your granddad there’s probably a reason for that. It’s special, it’s part of the, uh… the thing… when you do—”

Ben is becoming more and more angry, growing more and more nauseated, with every word she speaks. She’s reading him so easily, gleaning his secrets without his consent, and it’s infuriating beyond belief. He wants to grab her wrist and force the knife against her, but the way she’s holding it he’d have to twist her arm to push back and he isn’t certain he’d be fast enough to pull it off. He can only chew the inside of his lips and wait for Kira to finish her sentence. But he’s too impatient.

“Ritual,” he says. “Part of the ritual.” 

“Right! Ritual. So. Although it’s possible, I think it’s unlikely that you have a second fancy-ass old syringe of your granddad’s, and even if you do have some throw-away needles I don’t think you’d use them to kill me, because that’s not part of your ritual. Your granddad’s syringe is important and if you don’t use it, it’s not good. Am I right?”

Ben seethes. “You’re right.”

Kira looks very pleased with herself. He imagines her eyes, grey and unfocused, sinking back into her skull, and it’s almost enough to calm him. His fists are clenched so tight that his nails dig into the soft skin of his palm. It hurts, but he feels centered by the pain.

She leans forward and smirks at him. “Your granddaddy Aspirin was real important to you, wasn’t he. He’d be _so_ proud of you, if he could see what you’ve become.” 

Ben sees red. _Aspirin_. Insulting Grandfather as though she can, as though she’s _allowed_. She’s doing it to rile him up, he’s sure, and he hates that it’s working. He hates her so much right now, reading his mind like it’s nothing, making him feel unmoored like a boat lost in a storm. With anger bubbling, threatening to boil over, he decides he’s going to try to turn it back on her. He’s going to find a way to rile her up if it’s the last thing he does.

“What about _your_ grandfather?” he snarls. “Would he be proud of you if he were here right now?”

Kira stares at him for a long moment, then turns her fist palm-down and opens it. The blade dangles, held to her hand by the brass rings attached to the handle. She waves her hand, smiling fondly at the knife. 

“You asked me about my knife earlier,” she says, as though she hadn’t heard a word he said. As though his words didn’t affect her at all. “I stole the knife.” The sharp edge of the blade is tinged red with Ben’s blood, and he touches his throat again; this time his fingers come back even darker, and tacky, and he wipes them on the sheets. Kira either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. A very thin beam of light from the window falls across the blade, and it deflects off the metal, making patterns that shimmer across the ceiling. It reminds Ben of light reflecting on water; like a puddle after the rain, or tidepools on the beach. He’s not sure how long he watches the rippling light dance across the ceiling and wall before Kira brings her hand back between them and points the tip of her knife at his belly again. The moment she lowers her hand Ben recognizes that he had a chance to make a move, and he missed it. He hates himself for his inaction, almost as much as he hates Kira for making him feel this way. He looks into her face. She’s watching him, no longer smiling. Not amused. 

She’s beautiful, and he hates her.

“Tell me about it, Kylo. I bet you know what it is.”

He takes a breath and reaches into the stable part of his mind to find the information she’s asking for. The intellectual exercise helps to calm him.

“It’s a Mark One trench knife. Made in 1918 but too late to be issued in World War One, so it might have been issued in World War Two. But not all of them are. They’re pretty rare.” Basic information. Easy. His heartbeat slows.

“Expensive?” She asks. 

_Typical_. Probably thinking about how she can sell it to buy food.

“You could probably get a couple thousand dollars for it from a serious military buff.”

She hums, turning it around in her hand, considering, and he’s prepared to be even more deeply disgusted with her than he already is until she shakes her head.

“I guess I like it well enough. Two thousand dollars is a whole lot but I feel like it’s worth more than money to me, you know? Like it’s special to me now.”

A disturbingly powerful flash of understanding passes between them and Ben shrinks away from it, hoping for a bout of nausea to come instead. It doesn’t. He hates that, too.

“Yeah,” he says instead. “I know.”

The corners of her mouth turn up again, that mischievous smile reappearing on her face. “You’re smart, I like that.”

His cheeks and ears burn hot, unused to praise. He knows she doesn’t really mean it, she’s just teasing him; but apparently his body has a mind of its own. “I just know some things about knives.”

“And just how do you know so much about knives, Kylo Ren?”

He flinches internally at the sound of that name. “I have a PhD in history, with a specialization in historical weapons. Specifically involving, uh, wounding and medical care. The wounds they make, and how they were treated.”

Kira’s eyes light up. She seems genuinely interested, like a little sponge, absorbing all the information she can glean from whatever is around her. It’s terrifying and exhilarating, and it’s another thing for Ben to hate about her. He’s almost jealous of how _easy_ it is for her. “And the medical degree goes along with that pretty nicely, doesn’t it. What do you do then, Kylo Ren? Do you work in a museum? There’s a museum up in Philly that’s all about medical history, I’ve been there a couple times, it’s pretty cool. Do you work there?” Another surprise; why is it so hard to pin her down? This woman is giving him whiplash.

“The Mütter Museum. You’ve been there?”

“Hell yeah. Wall of skulls? Passed through Philly back in April and made sure to stop there. I wouldn’t miss that for the world.”

They have something in common; he’s done research at a museum she likes. He wants to impress her, he realizes, even though the thought of her being attracted to him makes his stomach ache. 

“I’ve been there too. I had a fellowship, did research there when I was working on my PhD. I’m a professor.” He volunteers the last piece of information, not understanding exactly why, but he hopes she’ll be interested. He wants to impress her, he realizes, even though the thought of her being attracted to him makes his stomach ache. He hopes she’ll parley with something about herself, some clue to her past, to her personality, but he ends up disappointed.

“Cool.” 

That’s all she has to say about that; her attention has already been distracted by something else. She glances down at the knife, then at the syringe, and then back at Ben.

“Were you gonna fuck me?”

Ben turns to stone, his face burning. He tries to slide away from Kira but freezes when she presses the tip of the knife into his belly, which churns with unease. She is smiling at him.

“You were, weren’t you. After you killed me, you were gonna fuck me. Say it, Kylo.”

Her voice is soft, and her eyes are bright.

“I was going to fuck you.” He hopes the humiliation in his voice isn’t too obvious.

She grins, the same wild, toothy thing from earlier. “Wow. Fucking _wow_. That’s intense.” Her eyes turn thoughtful. “What if I told you I’d fuck you willingly?”

He starts shaking his head before the words are out of her mouth, and he heaves, a great dry heave that has him doubling over.

“No. _No_.” She leans towards him and even though the point of the knife is against his body he doesn’t care. He scoots away from it, from her, back to the corner of the bed and holds his hands up to keep her away. “Don’t touch me!” 

Ben’s heart is beating fast, fast, fast and his cheeks are hot, hot, hot. The bile in his throat is rising higher, higher, into his mouth. He swallows it, chokes, swallows again. What had he been _thinking_ , accepting a ride from this terrible woman? Why couldn’t he have left her alone? He should have crawled into the forest and slept under a tree, and saved himself a lot of trouble.

Kira stares at him with her same familiar calm, and tips her head to the side. “Interesting. Why wouldn’t you fuck me alive?”

“It’s too much,” the words tumble out. “Too much _connection_. It’s like… another person, and they _breathe_. And they have _expectations_.” She frowns; clearly, she doesn’t understand. He tries again, explaining it as plainly as he can. “I… I have been a disappointment to every person I’ve ever wanted to impress.” Even as he says it he knows he’s not being completely honest. But he can’t, not with her, not about...this.

“So if she’s dead, you don’t have to impress her.” The statement is guileless, made without any apparent judgment. She's not disgusted or horrified; rather she speaks as though she is honestly trying to understand what he’s saying. Nobody has ever done that for Ben before, and he yearns for it even though he wishes it were coming from anybody else.

“Exactly. It’s not even part of the equation.” It’s not the whole truth, but it will do for now.

“And it feels good,” she says. “The sex, I mean. When they’re dead.” 

She… she gets it. Does she understand? Is that possible? He still hates her, but _this_ , this he likes. Feeling understood. He wants more.

“Yes, it feels good. And it’s good when she’s all mine. No expectations.” And no possibility of being left behind, but Kira doesn’t need to know that.

“Right. You can do what you want to her, and you don’t have to worry about whether or not she’s satisfied.”

Ben has never felt so understood in his life; he might just cry. _Kira understands_. He’s tired, but relieved. Happy, even. She understands; perhaps, eventually, she’ll let him take her willingly. “My whole life is about pleasing other people. My parents, and Snoke, and Holdo… it’s so good to have one thing that’s mine. I _need_ it, Kira. I need it.” He hopes he doesn’t sound too desperate, but the sheer relief he feels at being able to _tell_ someone about this... _thing_ he’s carried for so long is overwhelming and he almost can’t be bothered to care.

“I know all about needing things,” Kira replies quietly. Then she straightens up and says, “Right now, I need more sleep. Would you like more sleep, too, Kylo Ren?”

Ben nods. It’s been years since he opened up like this with anybody, and it’s physically and emotionally exhausting. 

“Okay,” she says, and stands, still pointing both the needle of the fisted syringe and the sharp tip of the knife at him. She waves the syringe around. “I’m holding onto this; consider it collateral. Your bag, too, so I want you to go out there and bring it in here. Don’t try anything funny, because I am watching and I will not hesitate to slice you up.”

Ben nods, eyeing the knife. She’s smaller than him, but, if she is who he expects she is, he is fully aware of what she’s capable of. Eyebrows raised, she nods at him encouragingly, and he shuffles through the bedroom door, past the bathroom and the bunks, and into the living area where his duffle bag lays closed on the other side of the fold-out sofa behind the driver’s seat. She’s behind him, he can hear her moving, opening a cabinet, closing it. He kneels beside the bag and glances over his shoulder to where Kira watches him from the doorway to the bathroom. Even if he had something in the bag he could use as a weapon - even if he wanted to - trying anything would probably be an immediate death sentence. So instead he checks to make sure all the zippers are closed; he’s sure she’s going to open them as soon as she can anyway, but the routine calms him. He carries the bag past where she lurks in the bathroom door, back into the bedroom, and sets it on the floor in the corner. 

Kira’s voice sounds from behind him. “Take off your gloves and those stupid goggles, you don’t need them. You’re real extra, aren’t you?”

Ben doesn’t know what _extra_ means but she doesn’t say it like it’s a compliment. He takes them off and tosses it on top of his bag. 

Ben turns back around to face her. The syringe is no longer in her left hand; he forces himself not to glance around the room to look for it. She still holds the knife, though, and she lifts it and presses the sharp tip into the middle of his chest. She’s shifted it in her hand so the blade is pointing the other way, the way he would hold a kitchen knife. He considers making a grab for it; at this angle he could conceivably twist her wrist around so the blade would plunge into her chest. But he doesn’t do that. He tries not to think about why. Instead he stands dumbly, waiting to see what she’ll do. 

What she does is slowly trail the tip of the blade back up to his throat. She traces it up into the divot formed by the central meeting of his collarbone, and then up to his Adam’s apple, which is sore where she cut him earlier. He flinches when she drags the blade over the wound, and she tuts. He can’t take his eyes off her face. Her lips are parted, eyes dreamily following the knife as she uses it to draw patterns across his skin. The sensation makes him shiver.

“You have a lovely neck, Kylo,” she murmurs, lifting her eyes to meet his through her eyelashes. “But I hate this sweater.” She takes a step back to grab the bottom hem and tugs it away; he’s thankful her fingers don’t touch his skin when she does it.

“Hey! Don’t stretch it!” Ben says, but she’s not listening. She pulls the fabric taut and shoves the blade through it, too quickly for him to even try to stop her. Not that he would. It leaves behind a ragged hole just over the side of his torso, and what feels like a superficial wound on his belly. The trickle of blood tickles. “Hey!” He says again.

“Fucking sweater,” Kira snarls. She lets it drop, and reaches behind her to pick up a large band-aid lying on the bed. She peels it out of its paper wrapper with her fingers, knife somehow still steady around the knuckles of her hand.

“What did you use to pick the lock on the bedroom door?” Kira asks him, carefully maneuvering the blade so it doesn’t cut him again as she sticks the band-aid against his throat. Her naked fingers brush his skin and just like that the familiar nausea is back again, rolling in the pit of his stomach. He welcomes it; he really should hate her rather than try to be her friend, it will be so much easier that way.

“Screwdriver,” he says, “from the kit up front.”

“Where is it now?”

He’d placed it on the top bunk, too high for it to catch Kira’s eye. He points in the general direction and she backs out into the hallway, reaches up, and grabs it, all without taking her eyes off him. She ends where she started, standing by the bottom corner of the bed just beside the door.

“Come on,” she says. “Your bed’s waiting, it’s probably still warm.” He hesitates, and she rolls her eyes. “I’m not going to stick you, come _on_ , I want to get to Saint Louis but I need a few more hours sleep before I can drive it.”

“Saint Louis?” Ben asks, surprised. She steps back into the dark cave of the bathroom as he shuffles past. “I thought you were going to drive me to the Ozarks. Why Saint Louis?”

She chuckles and pokes him in the back - with the screwdriver, he thinks. “Slight detour. I like Saint Louis, the food’s good, and I’m running low on cash so I need your fancy black credit card to do what I want. You got a problem with that, Mister Tesla Black credit card fancy sweater in the summer man? Afraid you can’t afford some ribs?”

“Nope,” he answers, and sets his glasses on the arm of the sofa before he crawls under the blanket - a handmade quilt - for a second time, while she stands over him. Out here it’s bright, the windows are shrouded by lace coverings, not thick blackout curtains like the ones in the bedroom, and Ben isn’t sure he’ll be able to sleep. He’s so confused. He hates Kira. She makes him feel ill, every time she touches him; every time he thinks about touching her living skin. But she understands him, too. He wants to make her his own. She has his syringe; Anakin’s syringe. 

She understands him. He hates her. 

He thinks about blue lips and unblinking eyes and a body that will move where he puts it, take what he gives it. A body that will not speak; a body that will be his for as long as he wants it; a body that can’t leave. 

He wonders if he’s right about who she is. How will he feel if he’s wrong? Could he possibly be wrong? 

“This is a nice quilt,” he murmurs as he settles. “Where did you get it?”

“My Meemaw made it,” she answers breezily. “I’m glad you like it.” 

He can’t tell if she’s lying. She must be a very good liar. What if she’s lying about understanding him?

He watches her back as she walks away from him, back to the bedroom where she sleeps alone. She doesn’t glance back before she closes the door, the click of the lock following right behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: mentions of knives and needles; discussions of blood; Ben imagines in detail how Rey would look dead; discussions of murder and necrophilia.**
> 
> [Ben's syringe](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/272327108702000528/)  
> [Rey's knife](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_I_trench_knife)  
> [Ben's fucking sweater](https://www.vince.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-vince-Site/default/Product-Variation?pid=MR7866835&dwvar_MR7866835_color=001BLK&glCountry=US&glCurrency=USD&cat=google_shopping&gclid=Cj0KCQjwpZT5BRCdARIsAGEX0zmGpuvibaPE7I-Bx4AhZjtd_Ci0FoX8jLFOMcZwhY_LmrXdG2DGicYaAnb1EALw_wcB)
> 
> Writer extraordinaire and generally awesome person [vanilla_villain37](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanilla_villain37) has dubbed Sunday _The Ride_ update day as MURDER CHURCH and has made a church bulletin. I love it so much, thank you!!  
> 
> 
> Tune in next week when the Murder Church Sermon will be titled **The Envelope**.


	4. The Envelope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Sunday, it's time for Murder Church! Hope you all had a good week.
> 
> Previously on _The Ride_ :
> 
> Rey and Ben had a bit of a showdown  
> Ben met Rey's knife  
> Rey took Ben's syringe  
> Ben admitted that he is a necrophile  
> Coming into chapter four, Rey has the upper hand
> 
> Content warning in endnotes.
> 
> LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL EDIT THAT [@alantieislander](https://twitter.com/alantieislander/status/1290816674367787017?s=20) MADE FOR THE RIDE! LOOK AT THE BABIES! THE SYRINGE! THE KNIFE! THE WATCH! BEN SOLO'S FUCKING SWEATER! IT'S SO PERFECT!!!!!! THANK YOU ALLISON!
> 
>   
>    
> 

Sleep comes to Rey easily, and when she wakes up again she wonders for a moment if it wasn’t all a dream - Kylo Ren in her room, the antique syringe, learning about his highly unusual sexual preferences. A quick check under her pillow, where she’d tucked his grandpa’s antique syringe earlier - right next to her knife - proves it’s not. 

The little electric clock on the shelf by the bed says it’s 12:04pm, which means she’s had about five hours of sleep, give or take, including what she lost dealing with Kylo’s bullshit. She wishes she could sleep eight hours straight, but she wants to get moving so this will have to do. She was serious when she told Kylo she wants to get to Saint Louis; she hasn’t had better food anywhere in her life, and she doesn’t want to go there by herself. If she can keep Kylo from killing her and having sex with her dead body she thinks he might be a fine companion for a day trip. He has money to pay, anyway.

The room is dim and cool; Rey lies in it and wonders if Kylo is still out there or if he left while she was sleeping. She has all his stuff in the bedroom, he only had the clothes on his back, but she’s certain he would find a way to leave if he really wanted to. She hopes he’s still there. Despite… hell, _because_ of his… thing he’s _interesting_ , and she wants to get to know him better. She wants to know more about why he is how he is, why he does the things he does. _How_ he does it. He was remarkably open with her earlier, which was nice. It makes her feel special; she has the impression that he doesn’t often get a chance to talk about his particular eccentricities with people who might understand. 

And yes, that. That's interesting too. Rey recognizes that he is an immediate danger to herself, but she has experience with danger; she has tested her limits, and knows she can handle herself. She's convinced that as long as he doesn’t have access to that syringe he isn’t actually going to do anything to her; the way he looked at her when she held the knife against his throat, she is certain that he's well and truly terrified of her. She isn’t sure why, all she’d done was to wave a knife at him a bit, draw a little bit of blood. It wasn’t _that_ bad. But by the time he was tucking himself in under poor Mrs Bergman’s prize quilt last night he was looking at her like she hung the stars in the sky.

Rey has to admit she likes it.

12:08pm. Enough dilly-dallying. Rey stretches, and groans, sits up on the edge of the mattress, and stretches and groans again. She stands up, walks around the bed, and opens the door.

Kylo’s still asleep. He’s a lump under the quilt, and he’s breathing heavily: it’s not quite a snore, but it’s close enough to make Rey smile. She hops into the bathroom quickly; takes a piss, rinses her face and brushes her teeth, in and out before Kylo can move. She returns to the bedroom and changes into fresh clothes - another pair of shorts, paired with a tee shirt from a band she doesn’t recognize, something that had belonged to Charles - Jason? Chad? - one of them, anyway - and ventures into the side pockets of Kylo’s duffle bag to search for his toothbrush, which he hadn’t left in the bathroom overnight.

There are two side pockets. She opens the first one and finds a passport, along with a birth certificate, folded into an envelope. The certificate is a copy, and it’s new, the embossed paper still crisp. KYLO REN, it reads - no middle name. Mother: Usha Ren. Father: Victor Ren. Place of birth: Buffalo, NY. Date of Birth: November 23, 1992. Rey is sceptical; she’s a very good judge of age, and she’s certain that Kylo isn’t a day younger than 31. She briefly checks out the passport; it has the same date of birth as the certificate. No stamps, issue date two years previous. The photo of Kylo isn’t flattering, but she supposes beauty isn’t the point. Not that she’d know; Rey has never had reason to own a passport. _Fake_ , her brain screams as she tucks them both away without bothering to try to hide her snooping. _Fake fake fake_. She should have known; the abandoned car, the shiny new credit card -- and what kind of a name is _Kylo Ren_ anyway? 

The next outer pocket has a toothbrush and toothpaste, a new tube, small, of a brand she doesn’t recognize. She untwists the top and is horrified to discover that the stuff inside is black. She takes another look at the tube, which declares itself to contain activated charcoal. Of course it fucking does. Top back on the tube, she sets both it and the toothbrush aside. She checks the pocket one more time, but that’s it. No razor. Rey clucks her tongue and closes up the pocket.

With no more external pockets to poke through, Rey moves to the main zipper. She pauses to check for sounds of movement on the other side of the door, but hearing nothing she slowly pulls the metal tab down the length of the bulging bag and tugs it open.

The compartment is roughly divided in two. The right side of the bag is full of cash. Bundles of bills, 10 and 20 and 100 dollar bills, stacks and stacks of them. Rey’s never imagined this much cash in one place, let alone seen it. She picks one of the bundles up and flips her thumb over the end. It whirrs delightfully and releases a scent that is at the same time both chemical and fresh. New bills. 

Her first thought, once over the shock of discovery, is of murder. Kylo’s asleep out there. It would be easy enough to surprise him, do her thing - it would be over with quickly, he wouldn’t even know - and then she could take it. Even without counting it she knows there could be thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of dollars here. The Bergmans' credit cards are still working but they won’t work forever, she knows because the cards always stop working eventually, and having a nest egg she could pull from would be great. It would be enough to get herself into Mexico if it came to that, and then she’d really be home free. 

She doesn’t really want to kill Kylo, though. Aside from trying to inject her with a lethal dose of fentanyl he’s actually been really great. He hasn’t made a pass at her; the opposite, in fact - he seemed terrified when she even suggested sex. And _that_ … she likes it. She likes how he looks at her, with fear and awe and a little bit of loathing. It makes her feel powerful. And that would be a difficult thing to give up. She wants to keep him with her, for a bit longer at least. 

She’s weighing the pros and cons of an immediate kill vs a future kill when she comes upon a slip of paper tucked between two of the stacks of cash. The printing is faint and she has to hold it up to catch the bit of light that filters around the light-blocking curtains, but she’s intrigued by what she reads. It’s a bank receipt, recording the transaction that resulted in this pile of cash, and the name on that receipt is not _Kylo Ren_ \- it’s _Ben Solo_. She looks back and forth between the receipt and the cash and tries to make sense of this new information. Kylo told her he was on the run because his killings were discovered, but what if it was more than that? What if he’d also stolen this money from Ben Solo, and Ben Solo is after him? That is a wrinkle she does not need at all. Or what if Kylo Ren is actually Ben Solo? She knows he’s lying to her, after all. Rey puts the receipt back where she found it and keeps digging.

Under the cash she finds something else that pulls her up short. It’s a manila envelope, thick with its contents, and it has “FBI” emblazoned on the front in blue letters, along with a red stamped CONFIDENTIAL and the same name from the receipt written in a scratchy hand. So Ben Solo is with the FBI. Which might mean that Kylo Ren is with the FBI. That’s even worse, Rey doesn't need to get mixed up with law enforcement. Other alternatives: Ben Solo is onto Kylo, so Kylo stole his money. Or is the money a coincidence? The answer will be in the envelope, Rey is sure of it. She takes a moment to enjoy the suspense, certain that she’s about to see for herself evidence of Kylo’s depravity. It excites her to think about it, and her fingers tremble as she unwinds the string and opens the flap at the top of the envelope.

Rey reaches in and pulls a sheet out at random. It’s a photograph, and she has to rotate it before she can make out what it is. And when she finally does, her breath catches in her throat. Because the photograph in her hands is not of a woman who’s been drugged to death and raped post-mortem. It’s a close up of the side of a person’s face, or what’s left of it. This person has been sliced by a blade, and then pummeled with something sharp, and then sliced again. There’s a lot of blood, and some bone and a few teeth that she can make out through the gore of what had been the person’s cheek and jaw. Rey recognizes the scene depicted in the photograph because she had done this herself, about three months previous, using the same knife that Kylo had been so impressed with earlier in the morning. 

She pulls out another photo, and then another. Each one of them is a testament to her labor, a different kill in a different state. Some were taken at the site of the kill, covered with dirt and blood, and some are cleaned-up lab photos, but all of them are close-up photos of wounds, and all of them are hers. She empties the envelope and spreads the photos across the floor so she can see all of them; the photos depict only eight of her kills, and a glance at the sheet of paper tucked into the envelope alongside them confirms that they don’t know anything, really; not who is responsible, or even if the crimes are related at all. She leans back and allows herself a deep breath. They’re going by hunches, and that’s just fine with her. Because although Rey can’t help but feel pride that her work is being recognized, it is concerning to know that she’s been noticed by law enforcement. She thought, somehow, that if she kept moving, switched automobiles regularly, never stayed in one place too long, she’d continue to get away with it. She hasn’t considered what might come _after_ , or that there might even be a time after this one. 

But why did Kylo have this anyway? And again, _who is Ben Solo?_ Is it Kylo? Does Kylo know that she’s responsible for what happened in these photos? Is this some kind of weird, elaborate set-up? Or is it a really unlucky coincidence? If Kylo isn't Ben Solo, if he's someone else, does this mean that Ben Solo is going to be coming after them? Rey's head swims from all the possibilities. She shoves the photos and paper back in the envelope and tucks it back under the piles of cash.

She turns to the other side of the bag, hoping for something more relaxing. There’s a roll of garbage bags and a roll of duct tape, under that an open box of nitrile gloves, a stack of square cloths a bit larger than her hand, a bottle of lube, a couple skeins of rope, a large pair of metal scissors, a bag of rubber tubes, and an open box of Magnum condoms - she considers those for entirely too long, her cheeks heating with embarrassment and not a small amount of interest, before shoving them aside and moving on. Finally, at the bottom, she finds some clothes in a plastic grocery bag. There’s a couple pairs of boxers - cotton, nice - some socks, a plain blue tee shirt, and a pair of jeans. This is good - Rey was a bit worried about Kylo’s clothing situation, she’d sliced his sweater up earlier in some kind of stupid fit and she had been thinking she’d need to go into Walmart to get him something new. She might do that anyway; she chuckles to think about how annoyed he would be by having to wear clothes purchased at Walmart. 

Next to the clothes there’s a cloth bag that closes with a drawstring and clinks loudly when she pulls it out. She opens it and peeks in, and is unsurprised to discover it’s filled with small glass vials, each full of clear liquid. She pulls a few out and reads the labels - ketamine, morphine, fentanyl. There’s another bottle, too, a larger one: “Diethyl Ether, Anhydrous (stabilized with BHT)” is printed on the label. It’s about half full. Along with them is a long, shiny metal case with an inscription on the front in fancy, old-fashioned lettering: _Property of A. Skywalker_ , it says. It looks old. She cracks it open to find plain metal with little clips embedded in the bottom. One of the clips holds a needle. She pulls the syringe out from where she’d hidden it earlier and carefully unscrews the needle and places it in the clip on the other side; the body of the syringe fits snugly between them. Rey can’t help but laugh as she tucks it all back under her pillow. Kylo has a special case for his granddaddy’s syringe; what a fucking nerd.

The bathroom door shutting and the rush of running water announces Kylo’s awakening. Rey reaches back into the bag and grabs the clothes, and his toothbrush and toothpaste. He cracks the door when she knocks; his face is bare, he looks younger without his glasses. He accepts the offered items and quickly closes the door again.

“You went through my bag,” he shouts.

“Did you think I wouldn’t?” He doesn’t answer, and after a few moments of silence - maybe his mouth is full of black foam - Rey tries again. 

"Who is Ben Solo?"

The sound of splashing. "My contact with the FBI. A real shithead."

"Why do you have a contact with the FBI? You told me you were a professor."

"I am. I do occasional consulting. My specialization with historical weapons comes in useful sometimes."

Rey chews her lip. "Those photos were pretty intense."

There's a long period of silence from the other side of the door. "I'm not going to insult your intelligence, Kira," he finally says. "I recognized that knife as soon as you pulled it out this morning. I was pretty sure you were responsible and I'll take this conversation as confirmation."

Rey smiles to herself. "Are you afraid of me, Kylo Ren?"

"Terrified. Are you afraid of me?"

She shrugs, even though he can't see her. "I was, a little, but not since I took your toys away. But okay. What about Ben Solo? Why do you have his money?"

"I was blackmailing him. Found out about a family secret that could sink his career. He comes from old money so I knew he could afford to pay what the secret is worth."

“Is this Ben Solo guy gonna come after you? Because I’m not real happy about that, for reasons that should be obvious. If he comes, I’ll let him have you. I’m not gonna kill for you.”

Long seconds pass before Kylo spits, the water turns off, and he opens the door. His band-aid is off, revealing a thin red line across his throat. He looks better than he did earlier; rested, like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. 

“I took care of Ben Solo,” he says, gazing down at her. “He’s not going to bother either of us any more.” He says it like it's the absolute truth, and Rey thinks she believes him. She wants to. He pauses, shifts from foot to foot, runs a hand through his hair. “You’re not going to kill me, because of the money? I figured you would, once you found it.”

“It might sound odd to you, but you’re more interesting than the money. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I could do a lot with that cash. I could go to Mexico and live there forever, you know? But it gets lonely on the road, and you’re okay, Kylo.”

“Even though I want to kill you?”

“I didn’t say I trust you,” she says with a laugh, “You tried to kill me and I'm pretty sure Kylo isn't your real name. But I can handle you and I think you’re interesting. You’re very lucky, you know. I’m not letting you have that syringe back, or the drugs, and you’re not going to step out of my sight. But as long as we are in agreement about that, I’m gonna let you stick around.”

Kylo sighs, his eyes flitting around her face, finally settling on her eyes. He works his jaw like he’s coming up with words and swallowing them before he can say them. “That’s good,” he finally says. “Anyway, we can’t spend that cash until we launder it, because it’s attached to Ben Solo’s name.”

“You mean if we use those bills, they’d be able to track you down. Because of the numbers?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know anything about laundering money?”

It’s Kylo’s turn to laugh, and Rey is shocked by it. Maybe he really is 28 years old. He has dimples.

“Nothing. You?”

“Nope.”

He shrugs, and points his thumb back over his shoulder. “I’m going to finish up in here, if that’s okay?”

“Sure,” Rey says. “We can go find breakfast. I’ll fold things up so we can go as soon as you’re out.”

He nods, returning to the bathroom. Rey goes back into the bedroom and puts the duffle bag in the empty drawer under the bed, tugs on her boots, and tucks the knife into the scabbard she’d rigged up next to her right ankle. The syringe goes someplace else.

She returns to the front of the RV and is pleasantly surprised to find that Kylo had not only put away the sofa bed on his own, but had also folded up the quilt and set it on the sofa’s arm. His glasses are there too, and Rey unfolds them and holds them in front of her face. The world blurs, suddenly strange and unfamiliar. She folds them up quickly, careful to leave them as she’d found them. She’s more comfortable behind the wheel, where she waits for Kylo to come join her for the long drive to Saint Louis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: descriptions of blood and gore; Rey thinks about killing Ben.**
> 
> [Rey's accent](https://www.dialectsarchive.com/texas-16)
> 
> I stole the concept of Ben using activated charcoal toothpaste from [dankobah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dankobah). 
> 
> Also I went ahead and added the "Come Marking" tag... not yet, but soon.
> 
> I always thank flypaper_brain for her extraordinary beta skills, but I have to say it again: she's the best and I love working with her, this story is much better for her input.


	5. Riblets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Murder Church time, now new and improved with actual murder!
> 
> Previously on _The Ride:_
> 
> Rey went through Kylo's bag and found a bunch of things, including:  
> His murder kit;  
> A ton of cash;  
> An envelope from the FBI, containing photos of her kills, with the name BEN SOLO written on it.  
> They are heading for Saint Louis.
> 
> This chapter contains explicit descriptions of necrophilia. If you want to avoid it, skip the paragraph that begins "It takes a while..." - although be aware that the entire chapter, especially the end, is sprinkled with mentions of necrophilia and Ben's thoughts about it.
> 
> Rey makes a reference to childbearing in the paragraph that begins "She huffs..."
> 
> Additional content warnings in endnotes, along with art that features a needle and a knife.
> 
> This is a relatively short chapter, but I think it's pretty juicy and I hope you like it.

After a strange and stressful morning the drive to Saint Louis is almost relaxing. Kira's in a hurry so they settle for a breakfast made up of snacks from the welcome center's vending machines. She gets a can of Coke to drink; Ben gets coffee and immediately wishes he hadn't. He tries to hide his disgust, but Kira only laughs; it's a little bit humiliating, but when she insists on sharing her drink with him, he has to admit it’s kind of nice. He’s surprised to find that he doesn’t mind the idea of putting his mouth where hers has been, and every cold sip brings him a frisson of pleasure. He still doesn't want to touch her living flesh, but one degree of separation is fine. At least it doesn’t leave him nauseated.

Kira takes them on a series of winding state highways, barely wide enough for the RV's bulk, until they reach interstate 75, then to 64. They don’t talk much, but they listen to music and local news and that fills the time. After about four hours they stop at another rest area and Kira insists he take a walk with her; he doesn’t even attempt to decline. It’s hot, in the 90s, but it’s not so bad in his short-sleeved shirt. They walk together up and down the sidewalk for a good fifteen minutes, watching the cars coming and going and the squirrels barrelling between trees, before Kira leads them back to the Winnebago and clambers into the passenger seat.

"I'm tired of driving," she drawls, curling into the seat like a tired kitten. "You do it. It's just like driving a car only bigger."

He’s not about to tell her no, so after several minutes of seat adjustments and checking mirrors and cameras, they're back on the highway with Ben behind the wheel, gingerly keeping to the right lane. He tells himself it’s just like learning to drive his boat, and the thought gives him a bit more confidence.

Kira naps for a while, her face tucked down into her shoulder like a little bird, and after she wakes up she puts _The Princess Bride_ on the television. Ben hadn't even noticed the TV, hanging from the ceiling between the two seats, connected to a DVD player in the cabinet. It’s too far back to see it from the front seats, but he can hear it and Kira recites along with the actors, occasionally breaking down into fits of giggles. Repelled by her laughter, Ben grips the wheel so tightly to keep himself in check that his knuckles turn white. At one point he glances at her and sees that she’s pulled her knife out of her boot; she sharpens it with a whetstone she unearths from one of the storage compartments in the dashboard as she recites the _“Mawwiage”_ scene, and the sharp ring of stone against metal pulls him back to a strange sense of calm as he drives them towards the sunset. 

It's dark by the time the movie ends, and they’re only just past Louisville. He hears Kira’s stomach growling in the silence, and sees her poke herself in the abdomen. 

“Hush, you. Hey Kylo, take the next exit, I’ll get us something to eat,” She slides the knife back into her boot and unfolds herself for the first time in hours. Her back cracks as she stretches her arms over her head, and Ben looks the other way as her nipples poke out the front of her shirt.

They stop at a KFC and she goes inside, returning from the hunt with a bucket of chicken and a side salad for Ben. He hadn’t asked for it, and his gut churns when she hands it to him with a grin. 

“You had a salad yesterday, I thought maybe that’s your thing? I’ll eat it if you don’t want it.”

He does want it, and he mumbles his thanks before he takes it from her hand, careful not to let his fingers brush against hers.

They sit across from each other in the RV’s tiny booth, the vehicle’s interior dark aside from the little light that hangs over the table. She talks to him around the chicken leg in her mouth. He wishes she wouldn’t.

“I think it’s pretty cool that you know so much.”

“What do you mean?” He asks, trying not to dwell on the noises she’s making as she gnaws on her food. 

“My knife. Getting to study at that museum. Was it a lot of college that you did?”

“Yeah. Four years of college, then seven years of graduate school, for the PhD and medical school.”

“Woah, eleven years. That’s like going all the way through high school again.”

“It is.” 

She hums and sets the bone down on the lid of the bucket, wipes her fingers on her shorts. 

“When we met I told you I go to college, but that’s a lie. I always thought it would be cool, though. Maybe that’s why I said that. But they don’t really want people like me.”

“People like you,” Ben repeats her, confused. Is she making a joke? “You mean thieves? Murderers? Probably not, if they know.”

She huffs, an almost-laugh. “No, I mean poor girls who are only good for working minimum wage or having babies. We don’t get to go to college.”

Ben can’t define the emotion that bubbles up inside him at her words, and he doesn’t waste time to examine it before he opens his mouth and lets it out. “That’s ridiculous. Kira, you’re smart, you’re so smart, it’s obvious. You’re out here on the road, you’re…” he waves his fork, searching for words, “doing your thing. You’re smart enough not to get caught. You’re smarter than me. And besides, you don’t really need brains to succeed in college, you just need to be able to do the work. I’d rather have you in one of my classes than ninety percent of my students. You’re clearly hard working; you’d do well in college.”

Kira stares at him, mouth ajar, until he runs out of steam. Then she shakes her head and picks another piece of chicken out of the bucket.

“Bless your heart, Kylo Ren,” she says. “Forget what I said earlier; you don’t know anything at all.”

He has no idea how to respond to that, so they finish their food in silence.

Kira claims the wheel after their meal and they drive for a couple more hours. She takes the exit at a little town called Evansville, and pulls into the parking lot of a Walmart. 

“I’m sick of the road, so we can stop and spend the night here,” Kira says, reaching down to the dashboard and pushing the buttons to lower the stabilizers and fold out the sides of the RV. She stands up and stretches, then heads towards the back. “I’m gonna change my clothes. There's an Applebee’s at the mall further down and I want a drink, and maybe some of those riblets. Do you like riblets?”

Ben is still sitting in the passenger seat, watching the traffic go back and forth on the main street down the hill. He’s never been to an Applebee’s, and he has no idea what a riblet is. So he sits and waits, and about ten minutes later Kira comes back out wearing a little yellow sundress. She’s let down her hair and brushed it out; it reaches her shoulders. She looks cute, and he wonders where she’s put his syringe. He doesn’t really want to kill her, he’s finding that he enjoys her company, but he’d really like to see what’s under that dress and he can’t do it if she’s alive.

She assures him that he looks fine in his tee shirt and jeans, although she teases him about his shoes - the black leather wingtips are all he has, and he hates how weird they look with his current ensemble, but he figures nobody at Applebee’s will care. He follows her across the parking lot, the asphalt leaching heat even in the dark. The air conditioning in the restaurant is turned down so low that Ben’s glasses fog up the moment he walks through the door, and it takes them a moment to clear. By then Kira has waved off the hostess and made herself comfortable at the bar. Ben takes a seat at the padded leather stool next to her and flips through the sticky menu as quickly as possible.

She orders a strawberry daiquiri and a plate of riblets, and he orders a Manhattan. He’s shocked when his drink isn’t terrible; Kira attacks hers with an enthusiasm he’s never before seen directed at a slurry of liquid sugar and red dye #40. The riblets, when they arrive, turn out to be strange little ribs, which he supposes makes sense. They smell okay, and he ventures a bite - just one. The sauce is too sweet, but Kira devours them with gusto.

There’s a baseball game playing on all the TVs and Ben watches, not having too much else to do. Kira isn’t very talkative with her mouth full of meat and sugar. There are a few people being served at tables, but the bar is empty aside from the bartender, the two of them, a couple of guys who look like they came from a construction site, and a woman sitting by herself. Ben finds the woman distracting after a while. She looks pleasant, innocuous, and she’s his usual type. Mid 30s, a few inches over five feet, round around her hips and chest. She’s wearing a short-sleeved green sweater, she probably works in an office. Her body is soft; Ben can imagine the give of her flesh under his fingertips as she begins to go cold. Her hair is red, falling in soft curls around her face, but that doesn’t move him one way or the other. She’s reading a book, and he wishes he could see the cover but she has it set flat on its spine. She holds it down with her left hand while she holds her drink - a glass of beer - in her right. 

Kira’s voice interrupts his reverie. “You keep looking at that lady.” He snaps his head back just in time to see her pop one barbecue-sauce stained thumb into her mouth. She has eaten all the riblets. Her thumb shines with saliva when she pulls out of her mouth with a pop and grins at him. “Do you think she’s pretty?”

“Uh,” he says, nausea rising. “Um.”

“I was thinking,” she continues, taking a quick sip of her daiquiri, which is now fully liquid, “that I want to see how you do your thing. You know?”

Ben stares at her. “My thing?”

“Yeah,” she says, her eyes shining and dark. She is not smiling. “I want to watch.”

Ben drags his eyes away from Kira and back to the woman, who appears to be fully absorbed in her book. He imagines her naked, in the Winnebago, lips blue and skin just beginning to turn sallow. In his mind, she looks exactly like Kira.

Something brushes against the shell of Ben’s ear, and he shivers. “Kylo,” Kira whispers, drawing out the ‘o’ breathily. “I’ll let you use your syringe.” He nods. He wants… _something_. But he doesn’t have the words. 

The next thing he knows Kira is on the other side of the bar, melted daiquiri in hand, sliding onto the stool next to the red-haired woman and saying something that sounds like a laugh. The woman shows Kira her book, and they both giggle, and the woman holds up her beer and says something that makes them both laugh again. They chat for a while, and then Kira points over to Ben, who is watching them intently, and he can see how the lady’s eyes grow wide, how her cheeks turn pink, how she quickly shifts her gaze away. She shakes her head, and Kira gives her a hug and whispers in her ear, and then she looks at Ben again. He gives her his best facsimile of a smile, and waves, and then the woman looks back at Kira and nods.

Thirty minutes later Ben is stripped to his boxers and tee shirt, and is injecting the woman with a lethal dose of fentanyl while Kira cradles the woman’s head in her lap as she holds an ether-doused cloth against the woman’s face. Her other hand is pointing her knife at Ben’s belly. Once he’s done he sets the syringe down on the shelf next to the bed, and Kira lowers her knife. She drops the cloth on the floor and uses her free hand to pet the woman’s hair.

It takes a while for a body to lose heat after it’s dead, and during that time the muscles stiffen and it’s not possible to comfortably shift it around. After some experimentation, Ben has found that the first few hours after death are the best for fucking; she’ll still be warm and flexible, and with plenty of lube he can use whichever holes he wants. He likes to position her on her knees, ass up, after the first round; sometimes he just keeps going, but more often he’ll come back to her after a rest. It’s nice to see her there, like she’s waiting for him; it turns him on. She’ll keep cooling down, though, and eventually she’ll reach a point where her temperature becomes unpleasant. That doesn’t always stop Ben, though; when he was finishing up his first book he became so stressed that he spent 72 hours with one woman, fucking her straight through rigor mortis and out the other side. By the time he was done she was a mess, covered with bruises and bite marks, limbs out of joint and handfuls of hair torn from her head, almost all of her visible skin coated with a thin layer of Ben's cum. She had even started to smell. It had been worth it, though; he’d calmed down enough to finish the book and had ended up winning a couple of awards for it.

“What’s next?” Kira asks, twelve minutes later, maneuvering herself from under the woman’s head and moving to stand closer to Ben in the tiny space. “Are you gonna take her clothes off?”

“Uh, yeah,” Ben answers.

“Can I help?”

He looks between Kira and the body on the bed, and finds himself frozen. At this point he normally feels powerful, like he’s done something special, has _made_ someone for himself. Someone who isn’t going to tell him he’s a disappointment, or that he’s ugly, or that he’s doing it wrong, or who is going to leave him before he’s damn well ready to be left. At this point he’d normally have an erection, he’d be ready to cut her clothes off so he could get her naked, _finally_ , and fuck her however he wants to while staring into her dead, unblinking eyes.

But that’s not how Ben feels right now. Something about this is wrong - very wrong. The usual sense of power is missing completely. The pleasure of having made something special, the overwhelming lust, it’s all missing. And it’s making him angry. This is supposed to be _his_. Where is it?

He makes a fist and brings it down on the mattress, where it bounces off most unsatisfactorily.

“Kylo, what’s going on? Are you okay?” Kira’s voice is tinged with concern, but that stokes his anger even more. What right does _she_ have to be concerned about him? It’s _her_ fault he’s failing.

“I’m not okay,” he answers, his voice tight and raw. “This isn’t right, it isn’t how this is supposed to go. I should... want. I should be excited. I should want to cut her clothes off her and spread her out, fuck her until I can’t any more. But I don’t want to.” He wraps his arms around himself and starts to sob. Tears are hot in his eyes and he paws at them angrily. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Kylo,” Kira says gently. “It’s just different, with me here. Maybe I should leave, I’ll go sit out there, you can tell me about it later?” 

But that suggestion infuriates him more. He doesn’t want Kira to leave. He wants _Kira_. And he wants her alive.

No, he will _not_ allow her to do this to him. He does not want to want Kira this way. He knows there’s only one thing to be done.

His grandfather’s syringe is on the shelf next to Kira’s leg, and he grabs for it. The barrel is empty of drugs, but he might be able to do some damage with a bare needle. He knows it’s a ridiculous idea, but he has to do _something_.

She’s too quick for him anyway. She grabs his wrist before he can reach the syringe and lifts her knife above her head. Ben’s answering shout turns to a whimper, and he figures this is it, he’s finally really fucked it up, she’s going to paint the walls of the bedroom with his blood, and he deserves it. But then Kira does something unexpected - she turns the blade away and crashes the butt of the knife handle against his forehead. He catches a glimpse of a smile on her lips before everything goes dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: Rey lures a third party and Ben murders them; use of needles and drugs; detailed thoughts and discussions of necrophilia, although no necrophilia happens.**
> 
> Applebee's is a fairly popular mid-tier restaurant chain in the USA, and one of their specialties are these weird little rib things called [riblets](https://www.applebees.com/en/menu/steaks-and-ribs/riblet-platter). Idk they seem like something Rey would like.
> 
> THANK YOU flypaper_brain, the best beta east of the Mississippi, or west of it.
> 
> AMAZING ART from [lothcat on Twitter](https://twitter.com/lothkat/status/1294841760942886913?s=20). I'm in love, it's perfect! Thank you!


	6. Ben and Rey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week's Murder Church sermon focuses on deviant sex as a form of interpersonal bonding.
> 
> Previously on _The Ride_ :
> 
> Rey and Ben were heading towards Saint Louis  
> They ate riblets at Applebee's  
> They made a murder but Ben was unable to "do his thing"  
> He freaked out and Rey knocked him on the head
> 
> This is the chapter where the fic earns its Rape/Non-Con archive warning, although it ends consensually (more or less). It was pretty uncomfortable to write and may be uncomfortable to read depending on your sensitivities. There is a bit of knife kink, if you wish to skip it stop reading at "Rey tosses the phone on the ground..." and pick up again at "Without a word Rey drops the knife to the floor..." Note that there are a few new tags. (I have held out adding that Femdom tag for as long as I could but you all probably knew it would come eventually hahaha) Additional content warnings (and a fantastic new moodboard) in endnotes.

It’s still dark when Ben returns to consciousness, his brain fuzzy and pain radiating from his temple. He’s lying on something soft - Kira’s bed, he thinks. He can’t move. He tries one arm, then the other, then his legs, but he is flat on his back and he can’t move at all. He’s terrified at first; in his confusion he thinks that maybe she dosed him with ketamine, but aside from the pain on his forehead his mind feels clear, and he calms down a bit when he figures out he can wiggle his fingers. Eventually he figures out that she’s used his rope to tie him up, tight like a package, which is its own problem. He could roll off the bed, maybe, but he wouldn’t get very far. He raises his head, which she had thoughtfully placed on a pillow; he can see Kira perched at the end of the bed next to his feet, the right side of her body facing him, her face lit up by the glow of the cell phone she holds in her hands. She’s taken off her sundress and is wearing only panties. Her face looks strange, and then he realizes that she’s wearing his goggles. He makes a noise, and she looks over at him. She sets the phone down on the mattress and pulls the goggles off, tossing them to the ground. 

“Hey,” she says, picking the phone back up. “How’s your head? I put some ice on it earlier.”

“Sore,” he answers. 

“Sorry about that, but I couldn’t let you hurt me. You know that, right?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, hot tears pricking behind his eyes. “I don’t know why I did that.”

“Don’t you? I think I know.”

Ben wills himself to stay quiet. After a minute Kira speaks again, softly, as though she’s confessing.

“I would have killed anybody else for that, you know. I _have_ killed people for much less than that.”

He looks at her breasts in the electric glow of the phone, and when the light dies he sets his head back down and closes his eyes.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

“I haven’t killed you _yet_ ,” she clarifies. “Maybe I’m still thinking about it.”

“Why not yet, then?” He’s afraid of pushing her too far, but he wants to know. She just sighs.

“You were interesting, at first. But now... I feel like you understand me. Maybe. Not many people understand me. Not many people bother getting to know me at all.”

Ben’s heart leaps in his chest. “You feel it too?” The thought that the understanding goes both ways is both terrifying and exquisite.

“Yeah,” she replies softly. “Maybe I do.”

Ben presses on, searching for more common ground. “How many people have you killed?”

She’s quiet for a minute, thinking. “Eighteen, I think? That includes Plutt - my foster father - he was the first. The others have all been on the road. People who picked me up and tried to use me. How about you?”

“Thirty four,” he says immediately. “Including her. You’d be thirty five.”

“Yeah,” she says, and the glow of the phone is back again, reflected off the ceiling.

“Where is she?”

“I wrapped her in plastic and tape and laid her out on the sofa, under a blanket. Was that the right thing to do?”

“Yeah. You did good, Kira.” The praise drips off his lips so easily. It is not something Ben is used to giving.

She doesn’t respond, just keeps messing with the phone, and her silence goes on for long enough that a pit begins to grow in Ben’s gut. After several long, uncomfortable moments, she speaks. 

“I found her phone in her purse, after I finished with her."

"You shouldn't use her phone," Ben interrupts her. "They can track that."

"Shut up, I'm not _stupid_ ," she replies, and he shuts his mouth tight. "Anyway, I did some searching. I was curious about you.” The pit in his gut fills with ice. “It turns out that Kylo Ren doesn’t exist. There’s no record of that name anywhere. I even searched this thing called Google Scholar, since you said you’re a professor I thought maybe there’d be something there, papers or whatever. No luck. But do you know what I did find?”

She sounds calm, not angry; too calm, and despite their moment of understanding from earlier he’s back to being terrified. A low gurgle sounds from his stomach. He lifts his head, looks at her again, checking for any sign of her knife, but it’s dark and he can’t see well. “Kira,” he says.

“I found Ben Solo.” She turns the phone towards him so he can see the glowing screen, and there he is, the photo from his bio page on the History Department website. She takes it back and reads, “‘Associate Professor Ben Solo specializes in military history, particularly the history of World War One and World War Two, with particular interest in weapons used in hand-to-hand combat. He earned his PhD in History from Yale University and his Doctor of Medicine from Yale Medical School’… oh right and then further down, ‘Dr Solo shares his expertise with the Federal Bureau of Investigation as an occasional consultant.’” She looks over at him. “You’re Ben Solo.”

She’s caught him. He’s lied and she knows and she’s going to kill him, and Ben is afraid. The apology spills out of him. “I am. I’m sorry, I just—”

“Hush, Ben. Can I call you Ben?” Her voice is surprisingly soft, gentle. He lays his head back down and nods at the ceiling. He can’t bear to look at her. He likes the way his name sounds in her mouth. “I lied too. My name isn’t really Kira Johnson, it’s Rey.”

“Rey,” he says. He likes it; her name is like breathing.

“Rey Niima, from Amarillo, Texas. So now we’re even, I guess.”

“I guess,” he says.

The glow of the screen disappears, bathing the room again in darkness. Rey shifts, her weight on the mattress moving from his feet up closer to his calves.

“I just want to make sure I have this straight, Ben. Somebody found out about your extracurricular activities and you decided to go on the run, and Kylo Ren was the fake name you chose?”

Ben sighs. “I got the documents and opened the credit card a few years ago, after I killed the first one. I used to just knock them out, you know, I didn’t mean to kill her the first time. It was an accident. I just gave her too much, and she ended up dying.”

“But you liked it.” Rey’s voice is quiet, and he imagines there’s a touch of understanding there, too.

“I liked it a lot. Not the killing necessarily, but I liked knowing that she’d never wake up, never be able to think about me again. And after it happened once, it was the way I wanted it to happen every time. But I knew if I got caught I’d need an out, so I invented Kylo Ren. I never actually thought I’d have to use him.” There’s another moment of silence, and then Ben hears himself ask, “Do you like it?”

“What, killing people?”

“Yeah.”

She hums, and sighs, and hums again. The glow of the woman’s cell phone lights up the ceiling, and then goes out again. “It makes me feel powerful.”

Ben thinks about how Rey held the woman earlier, how she petted her hair as she died. It doesn’t square with what he’s gleaned about her from what he knows about her murders. “Did killing that woman make you feel powerful?”

“First of all, _I_ didn’t kill her, you did. She’s all yours, Kylo Ben. I just wanted to see how you do it. But no, it didn’t make me feel powerful. That’s not usually how it goes for me.”

“How does it usually go for you?”

She chuckles at the question. It’s a dark thing, a little bit ugly. “Usually, some man tries to get something from me. Take something. Sex, usually, or tries to pimp me out. Or just makes a pass, I don’t have much patience for it any more.”

“Only men?”

She scoffs. “Men and the women who enable them.”

Ben doesn’t need to ask what comes after that, he’s seen literal evidence of what she does to these people, and Rey seems to come to the same conclusion. “You know what comes next, don’t you.”

“Yeah.” He considers it. The Rey he knows is calm and calculating, but he wouldn’t describe the person who wreaked havoc in the photos he’s seen that way. Wild, maybe. Angry. Violent. He’s not a psychologist but the popular conception of “psychotic” could suit as well. He imagines Rey doing the things shown in the photographs, and finds the idea remarkably compelling. But he doesn’t want her to do them to _him_.

“Thank you,” he says, “for not killing me when you could have.”

“Ah, this is more fun. Just don’t you do it again, okay? Because I still might.”

“I won’t,” he says. He thinks he means it. Not only because she’s terrifying and he’s pretty sure she’d kill him if she felt she had to, no matter how she might feel about him. But because he wants to fuck her, even more now than he did before. The thought of having her alive returns and he experiments, imagines reaching out a hand to touch her breast, tweak her nipple. The thought of touching her living flesh brings a warm cramp low in his gut; he's disgusted by how it feels a lot like arousal.

Rey’s voice interrupts his reverie. “You really don’t like living women, do you.”

He wriggles uncomfortably inside his rope cocoon and doesn’t answer.

“Ben,” she says, the tone of her voice verging from conversational to commanding. “Tell me, before I make you.”

The thought of Rey making him do anything turns his stomach and he capitulates.

“I hate them. Living women disgust me. All people do, but women...thinking about them, having to touch them… just the thought of it makes me want to vomit.” He can almost taste the bile rising in his throat.

“But you want to fuck them.” He can feel her eyes on him and he tries to escape, turns his head to face the wall. “Don’t you. You _want_ them, even though they make you sick.”

“I want them _dead_.”

“But you want me, don’t you.”

“I don’t want you. I don’t want anyone. I want to be alone.”

His pronouncement is met with another long silence. Rey doesn’t respond, doesn’t move, for a long time. Ben becomes aware of the sound of his breathing, the feeling of his own heartbeat. He wonders what she’s thinking, and then finally she speaks.

“You don’t, not really.” Her voice is a whisper, her tone is one of absolute certainty. She’s right, of course, but he’s not about to let her get away with it. 

“I do,” he insists. She’s bringing the anger back, and he welcomes it, it makes him feel like he has some kind of control of the situation. “I love being alone.” He does. He _does_. 

“If you choose to be alone, then nobody can leave you,” Rey says, and her words strike his soul with a blow more devastating than her knife could ever achieve.

Ben has no reply to that.

Rey tosses the phone on the ground and turns to face him, and when she does he can see the knife, gripped in her left hand. She climbs onto the bed, crawls slowly up Ben’s legs, the blade of the knife held away from him, the points of the knuckles pressing into the mattress as she moves. It’s dark, but he can just make out her form in the light of the lamps from the parking lot that filters in around the blackout curtains. She’s lithe, like a cat or a fox. Her eyes shine, and the muscles in her shoulders shift smoothly under her skin. Her breasts are small but they hang low, and her nipples threaten to brush his body as she makes her way up his torso. He can’t breathe. She crawls until her head reaches his chest and then sits back, resting her butt on his thighs. She’s very warm, and he can’t move.

“I like the name Ben better than Kylo,” she says, reaching out with her right hand. He flinches as she places it on his hip bone, where it juts out under the thin fabric of his boxers next to her right knee. The ropes have been wound around and around him, tightly but inexpertly, but she managed not to place a rope over the front of his boxers. She strokes her thumb across his hip and he shivers. She hums, and does the same with her left thumb on the other side, being careful to keep the edge of the blade from touching him.

“I can tell you’re not used to being touched,” she murmurs, as her thumbs stroke, stroke, stroke.

“I hate it,” he growls, and struggles against the bonds once more, but it’s no use. His cock is awake now, twitching between his legs, and he wills it to calm down; but it is very interested in what Rey is doing to him, even though she’s warm and moving. So alive. His stomach churns. “Stop,” he says, his growl threatening to shift to a whine. “Please. I don’t like it.”

“Okay,” she answers, and lifts her hands from him. The tip of the knife drags across his stomach, and he can feel it through the cotton of his shirt but it doesn’t cut the fabric. Even so he gasps as the sensation, and Rey giggles, allowing the blade to travel further up, towards his chest. She’s beautiful, and his cock is still twitching, and it’s all too much.

“No,” he pants, the only word he can coherently form. “ _No_.”

Without a word Rey drops the knife to the floor, where it joins the goggles and the phone. Ben breathes a sigh of relief, but it’s short lived, because her hands go straight up to her breasts. She squeezes them in her palms, plucks her nipples with her fingers, and moans. His cock likes that, too. He closes his eyes and tries to ignore the sounds she makes as she does it again, and again, and then she shifts to the side and his eyes fly open when she presses her cunt down against his thigh, just below the hem of his boxers. Her legs are warm but her cunt is hot, and it’s wet, her dampness seeping through the crotch of her panties, and he can’t look away as she plays with her breasts and rubs her cunt against him, her breath hitching around her moans.

“Stop,” he says again, as he attempts to bend his arms, thinking that he might use them as leverage to pull the ropes up and over his head, but it turns out she tied his wrists directly to his body so he can’t bend his arms at all. She sees what he’s trying to do, and she _laughs_ , the cunning bitch, she laughs and she leans over and places her hands back on his hips.

“I thought you might try that,” she whispers, and then she slides down to his knee and spreads her legs further, first gyrating her hips obscenely but quickly switching to shorter strokes that press her clit right against his kneecap. Her thumbs are back on his hips, and her face is so close to his crotch he can feel her exhales through the thin cotton of his boxers. Her breath is hot and damp, like her cunt, and he thinks about how that mouth would feel stretched around his cock. She could lick him, suck him into the back of her throat, and there’s not a thing he could do about it. Bile rises in the back of his throat, and he fights to keep it down. “ _Fuck_ , that feels good,” she moans. “I bet your fingers would feel better, though. Or your mouth, or your co—”

“Rey, _please_.” He’s whining now, begging instead of ordering. It’s getting hard to breathe, the nausea threatens to overwhelm him and his heart is going to beat out of his chest. 

“Please what, Ben?” Rey pauses, her cunt wet against his knee. “Ask like the good boy you are.”

His breath catches at the endearment and he closes his eyes tight against the pleasure it brings to him to be referred to as _good_. “Please stop. I don’t want you to do this, please stop. I’m going to be sick.”

“No.” She answers immediately, blithely, and returns to humping his knee. After a few moments she climbs off with a huff, and Ben takes a deep breath, thankful that the humiliating ordeal is over.

She notices him relaxing, and she laughs. “Oh, we’re not done yet. It’s just not working for me with the panties in the way.” And just like that she tugs them down her hips and kicks them into the corner, then she climbs back on and sits up on his thighs again, naked. She spreads her legs wide to reach all the way across him, which opens the apex of her thighs to the air. Without the panties her scent is stronger, at once familiar and foreign. His cock, already far too interested in what’s happening to the rest of him, twitches again, and he opens his mouth to complain but the only thing that escapes is a single sob.

“Poor baby,” Rey murmurs, and leans over him, placing her left hand on the mattress above his shoulder while her right one drifts up towards his face. “You’re crying, baby. Are you upset?” He hadn’t realized that he was leaking tears. He recoils as she traces her thumb across his cheek and it comes back shining with wetness. 

“Yes,” he whispers.

“Good,” she says, and opens her mouth, strokes the pad of her thumb against her tongue. “I know exactly what I’m gonna do about that.” And she reaches through the fly of his boxers and pulls out his cock.

“You don’t get to do that to me,” Ben says to her, _commands_ her, but she just tuts and gives his cock a squeeze. It was half-hard when she pulled it out but he can feel it hardening as it lengthens in her hand, and she strokes it, gasping, gazing into his face all the while, watching the tears roll down his cheeks.

“I do though,” she says, and as though to prove her point she releases his cock and shifts her hips up, lowering them to press the apex of her thighs against his erection. She rolls her hips, sliding herself on his cock from base to tip. She’s so hot and wet and _alive_ and he can’t control the moan that escapes his throat. 

Rey leans down, presses her breasts against his chest, whispers in his ear. “You want this.”

“I don’t,” he says through gritted teeth, and just like that he is enraged. He’s tired of asking, of whining, of begging to be untied like some helpless animal. He is _Ben Solo_ and he is the one in control, he’s the one who decides when and how this happens. He takes a deep breath and opens his throat in a howl, a shriek, and it feels so good, _so good_ to let it all out—but Rey shocks him into silence with a backhand across his face. 

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you,” she snarls. “We are in the parking lot of a twenty-four hour Walmart with a dead body in our vehicle. Do you _want_ to be found out? Do you want to go through a public reaming and a trial and be sent to death row? Because that’s what’ll happen if you don’t shut the fuck up and stay quiet, _Ben_.”

His cheek is sore and hot where Rey hit him and there are tears lingering in his eyes. They’re hot, and they sting, and he’s not going to be able to hold them back. Rey is right, and he hates it, he hates _her_ , and more than anything he hates how good his cock feels pressed against her cunt.

She continues writhing on top of him, long strokes over his cock, keeping her eyes closed and her mouth open. She uses the head of his cock to tease her clit, then rolls up to tease her opening, pressing herself over him and holding herself there with an expression of exquisite beauty on her face, equal parts pleasure and pain. She holds herself in silence, her breath coming in shallow pants, before groaning from her chest and rolling back down again to tease her clit. Ben is left with a lingering nausea but it’s not nearly as strong as the pleasure he’s receiving from Rey’s ministrations. She’s using him like a toy - but that almost makes it better. She’s doing all the work, all he has to do is lie still and let her do it. He almost hates how freeing it is.

The fourth time she presses the opening of her cunt over the head of his cock she opens her eyes and gazes down at him.

“I want you inside me so bad,” she moans.

“Please don’t,” Ben says automatically, even though the thought of being inside her doesn’t disgust him the way he thought it would, the way it _should_.

“But I want to, Ben,” she says, leaning down to cover his body with hers. Her face reaches his chin, and she nuzzles him with her nose. He prays that she isn’t going to try to kiss him, because he doesn’t know what he would do if she tried. But she doesn’t, instead she whispers, “I want you.” 

“I,” Ben says, “I…” His nausea has dissipated and he’s left with nothing but a warm heaviness low in his belly. Rey is alive and moving and he wants her but he can’t say it. He _won’t_ say it.

So Ben says the only thing he can say. “There’s a box of condoms in my duffle bag.”

Rey chuckles and pushes herself up on her hands, pressed against his chest. “I’m one step ahead of you.” She reaches over to the little shelf beside the bed and brings back a familiar gold packet. “Like a Boy Scout,” she shifts back again and rips the packet open, after a bit of fumbling she rolls the rubber over his dick. “Always prepared.”

The physical sensations of heat and wetness are familiar as Rey takes Ben’s cock into her body. Her liveliness, however… that’s something else entirely. Rey is so alive; she rolls her hips and strokes herself up and down his length, sits up on him and rides him, then lowers herself and presses her nose against his neck while all the time she’s angling him to pleasure herself. Her hands wander, too; they touch his face and his neck, squeeze his pecs through his shirt, grip low on his hips, or his thighs when she leans back, arching her spine to angle him against her front wall while she mewls and her wetness drips down between his legs and pools on the sheet. All the while she makes noises that proclaim her pleasure, moans and sighs and grunts, and occasionally even exclamations that sound suspiciously as though she’s saying his name. It feels good for him, too, surprisingly good, to simply lay back and let Rey use him.

“Can I tell you something?” She asks. She’s lying down on him now, her face in his neck, and her hand is low between them. He can imagine it, soft fingertips stroking against her clit. The muscles inside her are strong, actively gripping him as she moves around him. He can feel her heart beating in his chest.

“Yes,” he says, pleased that she’s finally asked him a question he can answer in the affirmative and hoping she’s going to say something nice.

“I’ve never willingly had sex before.” She says it in a whisper, like it’s a confession, but she continues to roll her hips around him as she says it, continuing to take her pleasure in the face of it.

“What?” Ben can’t explain the surprise he feels, the sudden burst of care, of _protectiveness_. She’s clearly done this before. But never willingly?

“I mean,” she continues, “I’ve had sex, and I’ve enjoyed it, but I’ve never just done it because I wanted to, for myself. It was always for somebody else.” She pauses to sit up again, and he can see all of her, damp with sweat and her fluids, fingers pressed against her sopping core. She grinds down onto him, taking as much of his cock into her as she can. She moans, and her muscles flutter and pulse around him. He’s never felt anything like it. “This is for me, Ben. And it’s ironic, isn’t it, since you’re usually the one doing the taking?”

Ben is too caught up in the sensation of Rey to answer, but he can't deny that she’s right.

He can tell when she orgasms because she bounces on him and shouts, and her inner muscles clench around his cock like they don’t want to let him go. He’s not sure he wants to be let go, and apparently Rey has the same idea because she doesn’t pull off of him.

“You didn’t come, did you.”

“No. I don’t know if I can.” 

“You need control.”

She’s right again, she’s always right, but he doesn’t hate her quite so much this time. “Yes.”

“I don’t think you do. Let me try something.”

She lies down again, keeping his cock inside, holding her knees tight around his hips and wrapping her arms around his upper arms. She’s like a second cocoon around the ropes, a cocoon of warm skin. 

“You’d come if I were dead, wouldn’t you,” she whispers, and a spark lights in Ben’s core. “Close your eyes, Ben, and imagine it. My lips would be blue, wouldn’t they. My eyes would be open, staring, but they wouldn’t see you. You could do anything you wanted to me and I wouldn’t judge you.” She pauses, and he knows that she notices that his heart is beating faster, his breathing too. She lets go just enough that she can move again, her hips slowly shifting her up and down his cock. It feels different this time, sweeter. This time, Ben knows, she’s doing it for him. “Imagine me dead, Ben,” she whispers again. “Think about that.”

His orgasm arrives like a train exiting a tunnel, loud and violent and rocking everything around it. When it finally fades he opens his eyes and Rey is there, staring down at him. She looks immensely proud of herself, and swipes a thumb across his cheek, which comes back wet.

“You like that idea.”

Ben, too overwhelmed to speak, nods, while his chest still heaves from the intensity of his climax.

“Good.” She climbs off him, pulls the condom off and tucks his cock back into his boxers before she ties the end of the rubber off and plops it on the shelf. She returns to the bed to curl up next to him, and he finds he doesn’t mind the closeness. She smells good, like soap and sweat and fresh sex. She’s warm, and lively, and he _likes_ it. He’s never been comfortable like this with any other person, and he wonders what the hell happened.

They’re silent for a while, and Ben is afraid that Rey’s fallen asleep when she shifts her leg. “Rey,” he says quietly, “will you untie me now, please?”

“You know what?” She says, sitting up and pulling his head into her lap. “I don’t think that I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: Rey ties Ben up while he is unconscious and touches him sexually, eventually having intercourse with him, while he repeatedly tells her not to; Rey backhands Ben across the face when he is unable to defend himself; brief mention of human trafficking; discussion of past noncon/dubcon; dirty talk includes description of necrophilia.**
> 
> I haven't put in a full chapter summary here, but please let me know (here, or on Twitter or CuriousCat) if it would be helpful to include one for people who wish to skip this chapter but continue reading the story.
> 
> @EmilyFiction on Twitter made [this fantastic moodboard](https://twitter.com/EmilyFiction/status/1297293858871685121?s=20) and gave me permission to share it here. Thanks so much Emily, I love it!
> 
> * * *
> 
> I recently took part in the [Let's Go to the Movies - Reylo Readers & Writers Prompt Exchange](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/reylo_readers_writers_exchange), I wrote five little fics (the longest is just shy of 3500 words). None of them are dark; they're an example of the kinds of fic I write when I'm not writing _The Ride_ , please consider giving them a read if they sound interesting:
> 
> [Fellowship of the Ring AU](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25797367)   
>  [Klute AU](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25920838)   
>  [R.I.P.D AU](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25947409)   
>  [Nightmare Before Christmas AU](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25925452)   
>  [Oceans 11 AU](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25906738)


	7. The Gateway Arch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week's Murder Church sermon is about the security offered by domesticity after trauma, and how ignoring difficult things doesn't magically make everything better.
> 
> Previously on _The Ride_ :  
> Rey tied Ben up and raped him. 
> 
> This is a monster chapter that was originally even longer, but I divided it so you can read the rest of it next week. There is a lot of character work here and it's not very exciting, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. I promise there will be an eventual payoff!
> 
> One million thanks to flypaper_brain who is immensely helpful both in helping me think through the story and in making my writing much more readable, I couldn't do it without her.
> 
> Content warnings in endnotes

Rey leans back against the headboard of the bed and sighs. That was, without a doubt, the best sex she’s had in her life. She’s never been in control like that during sex, and she likes it. Having him at her mercy. It reminds her a little bit of killing. The power, the domination. And Ben didn’t seem to mind too much, at least not there at the end. 

She runs her fingers through Ben’s hair and listens to the sound of his breathing, the occasional sniffles of the tail-end of his weeping. His hair is thick, and very soft, and moves beautifully between her fingers. She grabs a handful and tugs experimentally, not hard, and smiles at the quiet moan that follows. 

“You have real nice hair, did you know that?” She says, winding a strand around her finger and giving it a pull before letting it go and taking up another one to do it again.

“Yeah,” Ben says. His voice is quiet, almost sleepy, and his eyes are closed.

“You’re probably real proud of this hair, aren’t you,” she says, pushing both hands down into it like she’s digging into soft sand. “You have fancy shampoos and conditioners, don’t you. Oils and masks and I don’t even know what.” Growing up, Rey had depended on foster parents or occasionally friends to cut her hair; she hadn’t been to a professional salon until very recently, when she’d left Amarillo and started out on the road. The hair washing had come as a surprise, and lying back in the sink, with the warm water and the sweet-smelling shampoo and a real conditioner had been so pleasurable it was almost embarrassing. It had been intimate, sensual, and she was sure she didn’t deserve it. Ben probably has someone wash his hair every week or something and takes it for granted. It makes her hate him, just a little bit, but it makes her want to do something else, too. She crooks her fingers and presses the tips into his scalp, moving them through his hair and scratching his head in an approximation of the way she washes her own hair. A deep groan escapes Ben’s throat, and his shoulders tense up.

“Does that feel good?”

“Yeah.” 

“Why do you keep it so long?”

He frowns, says “ears,” then flinches when Rey grabs the shell of his right ear between her fingers and strokes her thumb down to the lobe. His earlobe is soft, and she squeezes it gently. He tries to turn his head away but there’s nowhere for him to go; if he turns it too far he’ll get a faceful of her cunt, and he seems to realize this and gives up. She chuckles.

“I like your ears,” she admits. “I think they’re sweet.”

“Fuck you.” Ben says, and his voice is languid but she can taste the bitterness behind the words. “You think things are sweet. _You_.” 

His words don’t make a lot of sense but his meaning is clear, and it annoys Rey. She pinches his earlobe, hard, and he yelps in pain, but she smooths it over immediately with her thumb. 

“I’m not the one who kills nice ladies just so I can get my dick wet. I only kill people who hurt me, I’m not a psycho or something. I think lots of things are sweet.”

“M’not a psycho,” Ben grumbles, and Rey laughs at him. 

“Sure, okay. Not-a-psycho Ben Solo and his pretty hair.” She’s surprised by how fond her voice sounds in her own head.

Ben harrumphs. “Fine. What’s sweet.”

Rey runs her fingers through his hair and considers. “I like animals. Puppies and kittens. Had a kitten for a while when I was a kid, but it ran away when I couldn’t feed it.”

“Don’t blame it,” Ben mumbles, but before Rey can react he says, “Fuck, no. Sorry, no.”

Rey swallows through the lump in her throat and gives another pull in his hair. “S’okay. Better off without me, really. Anyway, I like flowers, too. Not pretty ones, but ones that smell nice. There was a lady who lived down the street had a little bush by her mailbox, the tiniest little roses I ever saw. They smelled like heaven.”

Ben makes a little noise, and Rey stills her hands. The silence stretches until Ben’s voice fills it. “Miniature tea roses. I have some. Had. God, I love those things.”

Rey thinks about her neighbor’s roses, and Ben’s roses, and clutches his hair in large handfuls again. “I’m gonna braid it now, okay?”

“Please don’t,” he says, and something about the tone of the command makes Rey pause the soft movements of her hands. 

“Why not?” 

He doesn’t answer immediately, but that’s okay because Rey has all the time in the world and she doesn’t actually think he’s that patient. So she holds her hands over his head and waits, thoughts of roses fading away. As she’d expected, it doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes of uncomfortable silence for Ben to start spilling his guts, as it were.

“My mom,” he starts, and Rey rewards him by bringing her fingers back to his scalp and giving an encouraging rub. He practically pushes into her hands, welcoming them back. “When I was a kid, she’d braid it. It was long. Dad, he didn’t like it, thought it was weird. Mom understood. Seemed to, anyway. In the garden. The roses were the best. In the summer it was like this, in the garden. She’d let me lie down and braid my hair, we would tell stories and sing. Dad would come out sometimes, but he didn’t stay long.”

Ben’s not making a lot of sense but Rey’s pretty sure she understands him, and she can’t believe he’s telling her all this private stuff. He barely knows her, and although they aren’t exactly enemies they aren’t friends, either. She’s not going to tell him anything about herself for sure, not that there’s anything like this to tell him. She never had a mom or dad or gardens or songs or stories. She can’t decide if he’s an idiot or what. Part of her thinks his openness makes her special, and wants him to keep talking; another part of her is deeply uncomfortable and wants him to shut the fuck up.

Ben sighs and shakes his head, and that seems to wake him up a bit, or at least his next sentence is complete. “They are going to be so disappointed in me when they find out what I’ve done. I’ll probably never see them again.”

“Would the possibility that they’d be disappointed in you have kept you from doing it in the first place?”

“It was always a possibility that I’d get caught, and it didn’t keep me from doing it, so I guess not.”

She doesn’t push him on it. Instead she hums, and gets to work on his hair, separating it into locks and gently tugging as she weaves them together. She doesn’t really know what she’s doing so she doesn’t follow any kind of pattern or plan, just grabs whatever hair her fingers find next and forms that into a plait. The design is chaotic but the motion is steady and calming for both of them. Ben lapses back into silence and they spend long minutes like that, with him breathing quietly and Rey making little braids that stick out all over his head.

When she’s almost out of hair she can reach, Rey decides to break the silence. “Why Kylo Ren?”

“What?” Ben opens his eyes and gazes up at her sleepily. She wonders if he’d actually fallen asleep and is amazed at the idea that he would surrender himself to her so willingly. He seems to have given up asking to be untied; she wonders if he likes it.

“Kylo Ren. Why was that the fake name you chose? I mean, no offence, but it’s a shitty name.”

The tips of his ears turn a delightful shade of pink. “Oh. Uh, Yeah. It’s embarrassing.”

“More embarrassing than anything else I know about you?”

“Touché. I used to write stories when I was a kid, and Kylo Ren was the name of the hero. I never showed them to anybody and burned them when I was in high school.”

“They were that bad?”

“They were terrible. 

“Are you still thinking about fucking me dead?” The words are out of her mouth before she realizes they were in her head, but she doesn’t have time for regret before he’s responding to her.

“I don’t want you to die,” he whispers through gritted teeth. “I don’t want to kill you.”

Rey is shocked by his admission, but it makes her own easier. “I don’t want to kill you, either.”

Rey has an idea, then, the start of a plan. Maybe. She needs to think about it some more. But Ben’s hair is done and he’s going to be annoyed by having to take all the braids out, and that’s enough for her for now. So she maneuvers herself out from under his head, pulls on her dress, still lying on the floor where she’d left it, and slowly unwraps Ben from his rope cocoon. She winds the ropes back up as best she can while Ben sits on the bed and rubs his limbs. She’d like to help but now that he’s free she’s wary of invading his space, so she keeps away and concentrates on tidying up.

“I want to drive a bit more before we sleep,” she says, once her boots are back on and the knife with them. “Eventually somebody is going to start looking for her, and we need to be away when that happens. We’re three hours from Saint Louis and it’s not quite midnight, so I’m going to fold in the sides and we can make it the rest of the way tonight. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Ben answers, rubbing his right hand up and down his left forearm where red marks from the rope stand out against his pale skin. He’s marked by her, and Rey can’t help feeling a little bit proud of the fact. “What are we going to do about her?”

Rey hadn’t really thought about it. “We’ll find a place to dump her, but she can stay on the sofa for now. What do you usually do with yours?”

“I always did it on the boat and then dumped them overboard when I was done.”

“Excuse me?” Rey snaps her head back to stare at him. “The boat?”

Ben rubs the back of his neck. “Just a little cabin cruiser. I keep it at a marina on the Potomac, that’s where I take them.” He pauses, apparently having caught sight of the expression on her face, and has the decency to look abashed. “Anyway. In the morning, or whenever, I take the boat out, wrap them up, weigh them down, dump them in.”

“Just a little cabin cruiser,” Rey repeats, still stuck on that. He’s got a Tesla and a metal credit card and a bag full of cash and wears a fucking cashmere sweater in the summer, a boat shouldn’t shock her, but it does. For some reason she wants him to be _just Ben_ , the way he was when he was tied up and his head was in her lap. She wants him to be hers. What the fuck is wrong with her?

“What do you do with yours?” Ben asks.

“You’ve read my report, you’ve seen photos. And now you’ve met me. What do you think I do with them?”

Ben looks at her, his gaze raking from her feet up to her face. It’s intense, and Rey feels very seen. It’s uncomfortable, and she likes it. “I think,” Ben says, after a few moments of silence, during which he worked his jaw, “you do whatever you can.”

Rey laughs at that, because he isn’t wrong.

The moment passes, and Ben stands up, glancing around the room in a way that he probably thinks is subtle. Rey has to hold in a smile. 

“Your granddad’s syringe is safe, Ben,” she says, as gently as she can.

“You promise?” His eyes are deep and almost sad, like a child missing a favorite toy.

“I promise. But you know I can’t let you have it, right?” He nods, chastened, and she follows him out to the front of the Winnebago.

It takes them two hours to get from where they are to the rest area. They spend the ride with the radio playing, both of them silent. Ben naps, or maybe he just sits with his eyes closed. Rey suspects he didn’t nap nearly as much as she thought he did on the ride the previous day. In an effort to play it safe Rey passes the west-bound rest area, takes the next exit, drives back down onto the interstate, and pulls into the east-bound rest area. She doesn’t know if it would really make a difference, if they were being looked for, but she’s done similar things before and it certainly hasn’t hurt. From the look that Ben gives her when he realizes what she’s done she thinks he’s impressed, and that makes her feel warm.

Since the sofa is full of dead woman, Ben will have to sleep on the bunk outside of Rey’s bedroom. 

He’s sitting on the edge of the lower bunk, his head high enough to touch the upper bunk, when Rey steps out of the bathroom on her way to bed, her knife hanging lazily from her right hand. “I’m not going to try anything,” he says.

“I’m still locking the door. And I have my knife.”

Ben opened his mouth and looked like he had something important to say, but all he said was, “Goodnight, Rey.”

“‘Night, Ben.”

* * *

The next morning Ben wakes up first. He makes his way into the bathroom as quietly as he can and brushes his teeth; he stares at himself in the mirror as grey foam leaks down his lips, eyeing the still-red line across his throat; the red ligature marks on the hand that holds his toothbrush, left from the rope Rey’d wrapped around his wrists. He rinses his mouth and thinks about Rey, about how she’d used his body to bring herself to orgasm. A spike of anger bursts behind his eyes, accompanied by an unpleasant bloom of heat low in his gut, and he makes a conscious decision to not think about that again - nothing good will come of it. Next he showers, then puts on the same jeans and tee shirt from the day before. He wishes he’d had time to pack more clothes before running off - the thought of his closet back in Charlottesville, all the beautiful clothes he’ll never wear again, makes him want to cry. And the sweater, his favorite sweater, sliced through by Rey and her Mark I trench knife. He wants to be more angry with her but can only bring himself to wonder what she’s done with it. He kind of hopes she has it with her, back in her room. He thinks about her sleeping, maybe naked, with his sweater in bed with her. He wonders if she dreamed about him; he’s not positive, but he’s pretty sure that he dreamed about her.

Ben is settled in the armchair behind the passenger side when Rey wakes up around noon, trying and failing to read a paperback. He was determined not to think about what happened with Rey, so he’d spent part of his morning digging through the many cabinets in the RV, where he’d unearthed a small collection of books - mostly self-help books and murder mysteries, ironic - and a stack of framed photographs. He imagined that the photos were at one point placed amongst the RV. They all feature an older couple posing in various tourist destinations, but the largest photo in the stack shows them - along with younger adults, smaller children, a dog - standing in front of a nice suburban house. They remind him of his own parents, a little bit, and the photos they used to keep around the house when he was growing up. It’s an unwelcome thought, so he pushes it aside and instead focuses on what the people in these photos did to Rey that she felt she had to kill them, and he wonders how she did it. His imaginings are interrupted when Rey greets him sleepily as she steps out of the bedroom and into the bathroom, knife hanging from her hand as she waves at him across the room. She’s wearing his sweater, his _fucking sweater_. It hangs just low enough to cover the curve of her ass, and the slice on the side provides a peek of the naked skin beneath. He’s seen that skin, has felt it, how it both burned and soothed him, and he averts his eyes back to the book in his hands. 

They decide to leave the body under the blanket for now. They’ll need to do something about it eventually, but Ben wants to be careful and his insistence wins against Rey’s rather casual suggestion that they drop it in a dumpster at the first possible moment. So Ben does his best to ignore the body, and ignore Rey, and they drive.

It’s less than an hour from the rest area to Saint Louis, and that’s where Rey has decided they’ll spend the day. Rey tells him the last time she’d been there, back in March, she’d been with a young woman named Bazine. 

“Baz was really cool, until she tried to sell me to pay off a drug debt,” Rey says as they pull into the Clayton Transit Center - where Baz had apparently parked in March - insisting that taking the MetroLink into the city was much better than trying to park there.

“And what did you do with Baz?” Ben asks, unbuckling his seatbelt as Rey sets the parking brake. He meant to ask what they did together in Saint Louis, for some hint as to what Rey had in mind for their day, but Rey laughs and answers a different question.

“I carved her the fuck up. At least then she didn’t have to worry about paying off that debt after all, right?”

They chat a bit during the train ride. It’s early afternoon and there aren’t many other people coming in at this time of day. Rey’s surprised to discover that it’s Ben’s first time in Saint Louis—she apparently thinks that because he’s a professor he’s been pretty much everywhere, but no. She wants to visit the Gateway Arch—she and Baz never made it to the top—and Ben happens to know a little bit about that. He tells her what he remembers from a random architecture book he’d read as a teen; how it was designed by a famous Finnish architect who also designed Dulles Airport, and was built in the 1960s to revitalize the riverfront. 

“I love that you know so much random stuff,” Rey says, draped over the hard plastic bench across the car from him. She’s wearing another pair of cutoff shorts and a flowing top that looks like something his mother might have worn in the 70s, along with her usual boots. He knows the knife is in there, and the thought of it makes him feel lightheaded. She could pull it out any moment and slice him up, or someone else. He can imagine her doing it, like a rabid dancer, vicious and graceful in equal measure. He wonders what keeps her from doing it all the time. He’d like to hold the knife sometime, just to see how it would feel in his hand. If she would let him, which she probably won’t. She could press it against him again, too. He crosses his legs and arranges his hands on his lap.

Rey’s still talking and he forces himself to concentrate on her voice. “I wonder what was on the riverfront before, that needed to be revitalized.”

Ben shrugs. “Slums, probably. That’s what was usually torn down in the 1960s to make room for public space.” 

“Huh. Houses, you mean. Homes, where people lived. I wonder how many people lost their homes to make space for that fucking arch.” 

He finds her straightforwardness annoying, and can’t stop himself from snapping back. “I see that’s not stopping you from going to see it.” 

She just shrugs and stares out the window. Neither of them say anything else until it’s time to get off the train.

They’d had a rest area vending machine breakfast, but by the time they get off at Union Station Rey seems to be starving. Guiding them by memory, she drags Ben down one street, then up another, landing them at a place called The Rooster. 

“I ate crepes here,” Rey says as she pulls the door open and steps inside. “I’d never had them before, they’re really good. I bet you know all about crepes, though.”

“I’ve had crepes,” Ben confirms, “but I’m always up for another one.” 

Once they’re seated Rey announces that since they’ll be having ribs later—which is news to Ben—she’ll opt for a simple bacon and egg crepe. Ben orders the veggie crepe, and although he notices Rey rolling her eyes at him as he orders, she doesn’t actually tease him about it. She does watch him carefully as he eats, which he finds slightly anxiety-inducing. Halfway through the meal he orders a mimosa in an attempt to ease his nerves with alcohol, and Rey follows suit. The waitress doesn’t ask to see her ID, for which Ben is grateful; he’s not sure she even has a driver’s license. He realizes with a sinking heart that he doesn’t really know how old she is. She strikes him as very mature in certain ways, and he’s been assuming she’s in her early 20s but she could be younger. Considering everything else about their situation, her age should be the last thing on his mind; it’s not as though he’s in any position to corrupt her. After the mimosas arrive he watches her take a sip through the straw and grimace, and he pushes the question of her age far, far down to sit alongside the memory of the noises she’d made when she came on his cock the night before. He takes a sip of his own mimosa; it’s sour, and he grimaces, too.

They manage to make small talk as they wait for their food. Rey points out the skirt worn by a woman who walks by the window; Ben agrees that it’s very pretty. They talk about the weather; how hot it is, whether or not they think it will rain later. They discuss where they want to spend the rest of their day. Rey insists on the Gateway Arch, and Ben suggests they visit a museum that he found out about from a pamphlet at the front of the restaurant that he picked up while they were waiting to be seated. But which to see first? It’s strange; Ben feels like he’s performing, like he’s in a little play where he and Rey are the actors and everyone else is the audience, only nobody but him realizes it. He’s used to feeling like he’s performing like this; every time he’s picked up a new woman is a little play, after all. Figuring out exactly where to direct his eyes, how to smile, the right words to say to get her to come with him. But until today he’s never had an acting partner before, and Rey is quite the partner. If he didn’t know what she was capable of, what she’d done, he’d never guess. 

Rey is acting like everything is fine, like there’s not a dead woman in the Winnebago and she doesn’t have a dagger in her boot that she could pull out and plunge into his heart at any moment. And she’s acting normally toward him, too. Like he hasn’t tried to kill her so he can fuck her dead body and drive her RV to Mexico. Rey’s demeanor is what makes the whole experience so unsettling. Usually, when it gets to the point where the woman he’s with starts to figure out the kind of person he is, things change. She’ll be afraid, and that fear is part of what makes the experience for him. Rey, however, knows exactly what he is, and she is clearly not afraid of him; he still isn’t sure what to make of that. So he settles for wallowing in his discomfort, although there’s definitely something else there that is waiting to make itself known; early in the meal Rey unwraps the cloth napkin from around her cutlery and shivers, complaining that the air conditioning is blowing down her back, and Ben is filled with a sense of protectiveness that he pushes down with shame.

When they’re done with lunch it takes them 20 minutes to walk from the restaurant to the Gateway Arch - Rey had eventually worn him down to agree to go there first. He doesn’t really care, but he finds himself enjoying the process of arguing with her. The line isn’t long, but Ben’s heart sinks as he reads through the list of rules on the sign posted by the door.

“Security check,” he whispers. “Metal detector.”

“Fuck,” she grumbles, her expression darkening. But only for a moment before she brightens up again. “Well, I guess you’d better go in by yourself then.”

“Excuse me?” That isn’t at all what he’d expected her to say, but apparently she’s serious.

“No need to let my bad luck keep you from having a good time. You go on in, and I’ll meet you later, you can tell me all about it then. Go on!” She waves her hand at him like she’s shooing a wayward child out of the kitchen and says again, “Go on! Go on!” Ben, bemused and a bit bewildered, does what she tells him and passes through the door into the air conditioned lobby beyond.

He pays the $12 for his _Tram Ride To The Top_ ticket, passes through the metal detectors without incident, and walks quickly through the museum towards the line for the tram, which - as the name of the ticket implies - will take him to the top of the Arch. He’ll do it, to say that he’s done it, although he doesn’t plan on lingering once he’s up there. There is a small crowd waiting for the trams, it forms a line that leads down a set of wide stairs, one tram door per stair, and Ben waits alongside them, careful to keep his distance from the people around him. He’s thinking about Rey when someone slides up beside him and a soft voice says, “Boo!”

He jumps, thrust out of a very interesting daydream, to find the object of said daydream standing beside him wearing what she would probably call a _shit-eating grin_. 

“What?” He mutters, glancing around. “How?”

She winks, looking very proud of herself. “I found an _alternate entry point_.” She stands on tiptoes and whispers quietly enough that he has to lean over to hear her. “I slipped in through the back door.”

“Did you have to kill anyone to do it?” Ben asks quietly, not quite believing this is a question he has to ask. 

Rey somehow manages to look both innocent and offended. 

“Please! No.” But then she grins, that old wolfish thing, and whispers, “I gave the guard a blowjob.”

All of the air pushes out of Ben’s body at once, and Rey cackles as he wheezes. She then proceeds to give dirty looks to all the people around them until they start looking at their phones, or gazing deliberately in the opposite direction.

“I’m just kidding, Ben, oh my God. I waited until he took a piss break.” Ben finds himself, as he has many times over the past couple of days, completely unmoored by Rey’s chaotic nature, and Rey, yet again, seems to revel in his discomfort. He thinks about how it felt to be tied up by her, at her mercy, how bizarre and wonderful it was to just let her have him. He wants her now, here, in the line to board the tram, and he doesn’t know how to feel about it. He watches her twitch, hopping from one foot to the other, and wonders if he’ll be able to make it up to the top, let alone through the rest of the day.

Soon enough it’s their turn, and they have a tram car all to themselves. Ben hadn’t been paying attention to the vehicle’s appearance as they waited, and he’s dismayed to find that the space is small and windowless. Rather than an elevator car it’s more like a pod, with five hard plastic seats arranged around about eighteen inches of floor. Ben groans as he throws himself into the furthest seat on the right side, and Rey scoots into the seat closest to the door on the left, giving Ben a little more room to stretch his legs. The doors of the pod close and there’s a distant _ding_ , followed by a hum and a distinct feeling of moving upward.

Ben watches as Rey leans back and puts her feet up on the seat across from her, slumping with her knees spread obscenely. He tries not to stare, but the blood rushes into his face and his cock in equal measure. He can smell her cunt, or imagines he can, the warm, sweet scent from when she was naked, riding him, gripping him in her warmth, her breath on his neck, her fingers in his hair—

“You okay?”

Ben flinches and glances over at Rey, lounging in her seat. One hand is resting behind her head, cushioning it from the wall behind her, and the other one rests in her lap, fingers curled. She could touch herself, if she wanted to, move her fingers just a few inches down and press the tips of them against her clit, push them into her cunt. He swallows and looks back up in her face. She’s smiling now, as though she can read his mind and she likes what he’s thinking. Her tongue darts out and wets her lips.

“You look tense,” she says. “Claustrophobic?”

“No,” he says. His voice is too quiet, so he clears his throat and tries again. “No. Just, feeling a bit strange.” His hands are tight balls, nails digging into his palms, and his knuckles hurt as he slowly relaxes them and stretches out his fingers.

“I always feel a bit strange,” Rey says conversationally. She keeps talking and Ben tunes her out as he suddenly realizes what the pod reminds him of: with its white walls and low seats it reminds him of the back room of his boat, the one he left moored back on the Potomac. It was probably wrapped in police tape by now, all his belongings carried off, catalogued by the FBI. His carefully curated collections of nautical knick knacks and sex toys and various other tools of his trade equally divided up into plastic bags and stuck in a warehouse somewhere, just waiting for him to be found so they can be used against him in a court of law. He had a lot of fun in that back room. He watches Rey talk, watches her mouth move and her fingers curl and her knees bounce as she chats at him about who the fuck knows what. She would have been beautiful on his boat. 

“... you.” Rey’s voice finally breaks through whatever trance Ben had put himself in. He takes off his glasses and rubs his face; he’s sweating, and his hand comes off slick. He wipes it on his jeans and puts his glasses back on. The trip is only supposed to take four minutes. Surely they must be reaching the top soon?

“I said, what’s wrong with you?” She repeats herself with a curl of her lip, lowering her feet to the floor, scooting back in her seat and then leaning forward. “You look real uncomfortable, and your cock’s hard.” She licks her lips lasciviously and very slowly rakes her eyes from his face all the way down to his feet. “Makes me think about how you looked last night.” 

Very slowly she scoots sideways, closer to where Ben’s knees make their cramped home. Ben scoots, too, desperate to get away from her, and Rey scoots again, until he’s worked his way into the corner and Rey’s knee is pressed up against his. She places her hand on his knee; it’s hot through the fabric of his jeans. It burns him, and the warmth in his belly spikes. It isn’t nausea; it’s definitely arousal. He opens his mouth but the only sound that comes out is a sigh. She digs her fingers into the meat of his leg, her grin dark and predatory. “I can help you with that.”

Ben snaps. He hurls himself forward with a growl, throwing them both off-balance. She yells and tumbles to the ground; he lands on top of her, just as a recorded voice announces their arrival at the top of the Gateway Arch. Ben is back on his feet as soon as the door opens, leaving Rey on the ground behind him. He stumbles through the door, pushes past the line of people waiting to go back down, and rushes across the top of the arch as quickly as he can. He’s barely looking where he’s going, only concentrating enough to make sure he doesn’t accidentally push someone over. He just wants to get away from Rey. He doesn’t know what he was trying to do, back in the tram, what he would have done had the door not opened at that exact moment. Nothing bad, he’s sure. Nothing that would have hurt her. 

As he expected there’s another tram line here on the other side, and the lines on this side are shorter; he’s able to hop into one immediately, just as the door is closing. There’s a small family there already, a man and a woman, just about his age, and a girl who is large enough to stand on her own but small enough to have a pacifier in her mouth. The girl gurgles at him pleasantly, and her parents gather in the very back of the tram and, following a very brief set of hellos accompanied by tight smiles, do their very best to ignore him. He doesn’t blame them; he probably looks like shit, he’s out of breath from the run and from general anxiety, and although he’s showered every morning he is wearing two-day old clothes and he hasn’t shaved in… three days? Four? He isn’t even sure what day of the week it is now. Add to that the cut across his throat, the rope marks still visible around his wrists… what a fucking mess he is.

Ben slumps in the chair next to the father, and when he rubs his hand across his face he realizes his glasses are missing; they must have slipped off when he lunged at Rey in the other pod, and he was so distressed he hadn’t even realized it. She’d _touched_ him, and instead of making him feel ill it had made him think of when she’d touched him before, when he was tied up and he couldn't move, when he had to take whatever she gave him. He’d liked it, too, and it terrifies him. Her fingers dancing in her hair. And before that, her skin against his skin, her breath warm in his face, his cock inside her body, how her muscles clenched around him when she came. But in the pod, on the other side, he wasn’t tied up. He could do what he wanted to. And he… he wanted her, again. Wants her. _Alive_. 

He sits quietly, holding his head in his hands, for the long ride down. By the time they reach the ground Ben is calm enough to think clearly again. He’s humiliated; whatever he was going to do earlier, he knows he’s ruined the day, and he feels like shit about it. He waits by the trams for a few minutes, but Rey doesn’t come out, so either she’s gone down on the other side or she’s decided to take her time at the top. She must figure that he’s not actually going to run away, and she’s not wrong. Even if he made his way back out to the Winnebago, it’s not like he could take it; she has the keys in the pocket of her shorts. He figures she knows where to find him when she’s ready to, so he wanders across the hallway to wait in the gift shop. 

There are tee shirts and pens, snow globes and puzzles, posters and books, all featuring one image or another of the ubiquitous Gateway Arch. Ben, aware of his lack of clothing, squints at the shirts and grabs a couple for himself, and then takes one for Rey, too. Along one corner of the back wall is a shelf lined with stuffed animals, buffalo and bears and even a few “Regal Eagles”, but the one that Ben is drawn to is a stuffed version of the Arch itself, slate grey and soft, its eyes closed in a joyful smile, with round pink felt cheeks and a red felt heart at the base of its thick right leg. There's only one of them, and he takes that as a sign. He balances it on top of the shirts; it seems like the right thing to do, a little apology to Rey for how he behaved earlier. He makes the purchase, and goes back to the tram stop to wait for her.

She comes down about ten minutes later. She’s wearing his glasses and when she comes out of the tram door she glances around, but when she sees him standing there at the top of the stairs she slowly saunters in his direction, the other people departing the tram flowing more quickly around her. When she gets close enough for him to make out the expression on her face, he’s not surprised to find her grinning. He takes a step back so she won’t bump into him when she pushes herself up the last stair. 

“Hey,” she says. “You missed quite the sight.”

“May I have my glasses, please?”

“Oh what, these glasses? I found these on the floor, I didn’t think—”

“ _Rey_ ,” he says, and there must be something in his tone because she mumbles something - he can’t quite understand what she says but he’s certain it’s rude - tugs the glasses off, and holds them out to him without folding them up. He pulls them gingerly from her fingers, quickly wipes down the lenses with the hem of his shirt, and sets them back on his nose. With the glasses to sharpen his eyesight he can see her better, the line of her jaw, the hair pulling out of her buns, the green and gold flecks that dance in her eyes. “Here,” he says, and before he has time to lose his nerve he pulls the plush Arch out of the bag and thrusts it at her. Her eyes widen and her grin is replaced with a look of shock, which is quickly replaced with a confused frown.

“What?” She stares at it, does not reach for it, and then glances up at him. “What?”

He pushes it into her chest, being careful not to touch her, and she grabs it when he lets it go. He feels like an idiot but he’s going to make her take the plush or else they’re going to leave it here on the floor. “I’m sorry I ran away upstairs. I’m sorry I ruined it. I’m sorry, okay?”

She stares over his shoulder instead of looking at his face. It’s strange; he didn’t think she was capable of nervousness. Maybe she’s faking it; she’s a very good actress, after all. “I’m, uh,” she continues, finally glancing up at him again, “I’m sorry you missed the view.”

“Was it a good view?” Ben asks, taking a tentative step towards the exit. Rey follows his lead.

“It was.” He opens the door and holds it as she follows him out, her cheek lowered to the top point of the plush Arch. She’s staring past him, towards the park, but her eyes are unfocused and slightly dreamy. “We were so high up, it was like I could see forever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: Rope bondage carried over from the previous chapter; Ben has an anxiety attack; mentions of past attempted human trafficking; mentions of necrophilia and murder.**
> 
> [The Rooster](https://www.roosterstl.com/)  
> [The Gateway Arch](https://www.gatewayarch.com/)
> 
> A tall man in a Gateway Arch tram pod (it's a tight fit!)  
> 
> 
> Rey's plush Arch ([link to Etsy](https://www.etsy.com/listing/84279527/st-louis-arch-plush-cardinals-sports-toy), although at the time of posting this is sold out)  
> 
> 
> Finally, another art gift from [lothcat on Twitter](https://twitter.com/lothkat/status/1299898293309313024?s=20)! Thank you so much, this art is perfect for this chapter and I adore it.


	8. Touched

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week's Murder Church sermon is about learning when to give, and when to take.
> 
> Previously on _The Ride_ :  
> Rey and Ben chatted while Ben remained tied up, and Rey braided his hair  
> They went to the Gateway Arch in St Louis and Ben had an anxiety attack  
> As an apology, Ben bought Rey an Arch plush
> 
> The usual thank you to flypaper_brain without whom this story would probably not exist (at least it wouldn't be nearly this good)
> 
> No new tags this week! Content warnings in the end notes.

It isn’t that Rey has never received a gift before.

She’s been gifted stuffed animals, and food, and even, once, a yellow-enameled sun on a silver chain, long since lost. But every gift she could remember receiving was only given to her because the person giving it wanted something from her. Sex, usually. Or favors. In Rey’s world, gifts aren’t freely given; they’re commodities, items of exchange. She would take them with the understanding that she’d be expected to give something in return, sooner or later.

Rey has been given a fair number of gifts in the months she’s been hitchhiking, and she had long since started to view the giving of a gift as a sign that it was time to do her thing and move on. But walking down the sidewalk with Ben, who was doing his best to follow the little map on the back of the museum brochure that he’d taken from the restaurant, she doesn’t think that’s what this is. Ben gave her the plush because he was sorry. She supposes that he wanted her forgiveness in return, but he didn’t ask for it, and she didn’t really give it to him. She apologized for him missing the view, which was something. Maybe it was enough? She glances over at Ben, who is frowning and squinting down at the map, and then looks up to check the street signs to make sure they’re walking in the right direction. Ben is different. _Duh_ of course he’s different, she thinks, but not only like _that_. Rey can imagine another man, with the same desires that Ben has, but who would be a lot more like the other men Rey has known. The ones who give only so they can take, or who take anyway, because they think they can. Ben _wants_ to give; Rey is certain of it. He just doesn’t know how, any more than she does.

She walks along deep in thought, the soft grey thing clutched under her chin, heat shining down from the sky and reflecting again up on the sidewalk, so she’s not really paying attention when Ben finally stops.

“We’re here!”

Rey looks up to where Ben is pointing, across a parking lot towards a large building. She is confused. “It’s a warehouse. And there’s an airplane. And… is that a school bus on the roof?” She looks over at him and he’s staring at her, hands fisting the brochure in front of him. “What is this?”

“It’s the City Museum. It’s like… living art? Um,” he unfolds the brochure and reads from it. “ _City Museum is a hundred-year-old warehouse in downtown St. Louis in which artists have repurposed the pieces of old cities to build miles of tunnels, slides, climbers, bridges, and castles_. So it’s like, a playground made of art?”

She looks back at the building. It does look kind of neat, but she’s still confused. “I was expecting paintings, statues maybe. Or historical stuff? You’re a history professor, after all, don’t they have a history museum?”

“I don’t know,” Ben says, as he pushes his fingers through his hair. “I saw this brochure in the restaurant, and I thought it looked like something you might like.”

“Do you think I wouldn’t like paintings or historic shit?” She shoots back, belligerent. Her chest feels tight and hot, she wants to fight. He’s being nice to her, and it’s making her angry, and she doesn’t exactly know why.

He doesn’t take her bait. He just stands there for a minute, and then he shrugs. “I know you’d like those things, I just thought this looked like fun. But if you want we can go find another museum, or something else to do.” He sounds sincere, like he isn’t angry. Like he’s actually happy to do whatever she wants. They stand there on the corner, some people walk by - a family with a stroller, an older couple, a group of teenagers - and Rey listens to the sound of her heartbeat in her head and breathes through the slowly loosening tightness in her chest. Ben watches her, his face still, eyes inscrutable behind the lenses of his glasses.

“No,” she finally says, relaxing her hold on the plush arch, which she has decided to call “Archie”; although she doesn’t plan to tell that to Ben. “This is fine.”

They find the entrance, Ben pays for their tickets, and then they’re in. 

The City Museum is, as Ben described it, a playground made of art. According to the brochure it’s a former shoe warehouse, but it’s been taken apart and put back together again in the most wonderful way. It’s so full of _stuff_ , metal and wood and sculptures that move and others that stand still, and random pieces of all sorts of things put together in a way that works. Rey runs from room to room, children and families rushing alongside, with Ben doing his best to keep up. She keeps Archie clutched in her hand, and Ben carries the bag from the gift shop. She keeps forgetting to ask what’s in it; she doesn’t really care, but she notices it. She wonders if there’s more in there for her, and the thought that there might be makes her feel warm in her chest. 

The museum building is constructed of enormous, sun-lit galleries connected by dark, narrow passages, and the entire space is criss-crossed by scaffolding, and there are even slides that lead from the upper levels down to the floor. In one room there’s a crew installing some kind of three-dimensional mosaic made of scraps of cars and pickup trucks, and they stop to watch. Rey is entranced; she’s never seen something so random and ugly taken and made into something beautiful, something new. 

Eventually the artists take a break and Ben encourages her to go to the playground outside. It’s incredible, and Rey briefly wishes that she was much younger; how much fun she could have had here as a little girl. It’s hot but the air isn’t too bad, and Ben sits down in the shade on a wooden bench that looks like it belongs in a church while Rey walks up and down the asphalt, watching the children run back and forth through the mesh metal tube that connects the scaffolding with the airplane that she’d seen from the sidewalk, which is set on the top of a pillar at least three stories off the ground. 

It isn’t her fault, she just isn’t watching where she’s going, but she wanders into the path of the downward spout of one of the slides just as someone tumbles out. The someone is small, but their legs are long enough to get tangled in Rey’s, and she stumbles over, landing hard on her hands and knees, the movement knocking Archie several feet away. 

“I’m sorry!” A little voice pipes from just above the pair of pink sneakers that Rey can glimpse out of the corner of her eye, but the breath has been knocked out of her and she can’t respond. There’s a bit of a shuffle, movement and noise around her, a man’s voice she doesn’t recognize asking her if she’s okay, but it’s all interrupted by quickly approaching footsteps and Ben’s voice shouting, “Excuse me! Excuse me!”, and suddenly Rey isn’t on her hands and knees any more, she’s being rolled over and into Ben’s arms. She’s so surprised to find herself there that she can’t say anything, although she notes the feeling of the skin of his right arm, tucked under her knee, and the soft cotton of his tee-shirt against her cheek. He smells like heat, and soap, and a little bit like old sweat. She breathes him in, and hates how his presence calms her. “Excuse me,” he says again, huffily, and then she’s up and he’s carrying her across the open area of the playground.

“My plush,” she whines, feeling small and _ridiculous_ , but he places her on the bench and then drops to his knees on the ground in front of her.

“We’ll get it,” he says, “I’m worried about your knees.” It’s only then that she notices that she’s actually been injured; that both of her knees are scraped and bleeding, and that they hurt. Ben places the fingers of one hand on the inner joint of her right knee and holds her ankle with the other, then gently lifts her foot up. Rey gasps through her teeth as the broken skin folds up into itself. “Does the joint hurt?” Ben asks, lowering her foot again, then pushing it further which stretches the skin, causing another gasp of pain.

“No, just the skin.” 

Ben nods, and gives her other knee the same treatment. By the time he’s satisfied that the only damage is on the surface, a member of the museum staff has shown up with a first aid kit in a white plastic box. Ben grabs it out of the person’s hand and waves them off, then busies himself with putting Rey back together. Rey watches him work, how steady his hands are, how gentle his fingers. She likes his hands, another thing about him that can be dangerous but that makes her feel safe. She thinks about him putting his hands on other parts of her body and wiggles in her seat. If Ben notices he doesn’t show it; he is absolutely focused on dressing her wounds, and she finds that focusing on that is calming, too. 

The hydrogen peroxide he uses to clean her cuts is cold and bubbles against her skin, the ointment that follows is sticky and warm and smelling of chemicals. It’s not until he covers the cuts with two large band aids that he finally relaxes, sits back on his heels and rubs his face, and then he finally glances up to meet Rey’s eyes. They gaze at each other like that for a long moment, and Rey is about to open her mouth when a small voice sounds from off to her left.

“You dropped your doll,” the voice says, and Rey turns her head to see the little girl who knocked her down standing there, holding Archie out towards her. It looks none the worse for wear, and Rey takes it back with a smile.

“Thank you. Are you okay?”

“Uh-huh. I’m sorry I hurt you.” The girl bites her lip and looks down guiltily at Rey’s knees.

“It’s really okay,” Rey says, swinging her feet as well as she can without kicking Ben. “In a few days I’ll be right as rain, and it doesn’t hurt too much.”

“Okay,” the girl says, apparently appeased, and Rey watches her jog over to where her father waits for her. His eyes linger on Rey, and she stares back at him until he looks away. When she looks down at Ben, he’s gazing up at her.

“What,” she says, clutching Archie to her chest again.

“Nothing,” he says, easing himself off the ground and sitting down heavily beside her. They sit like that, silent and side-by-side. Eventually the museum staff member returns for the first aid kit, and still they sit together. Rey watches the children play and catches glimpses of Ben out of the corner of her eye. She thinks about his hands, and his ears, and other parts of him, and tries not to shift around too much. Ben sits still, arms crossed, staring out into space. He doesn’t look like he’s watching anything; he looks like he’s thinking, and Rey wants to know what he’s thinking about.

“You touched me,” she whispers, not even sure he’ll hear her.

“You were hurt,” he grunts, drawing his arms more tightly around himself. She thinks about how lovely it felt to be held in those arms, how swiftly he picked her up, how he smelled when he carried her to the bench. “I wasn’t going to leave you there, I wasn’t going to let you bleed.” His mouth is drawn in a tight line, and Rey feels strange.

“Thanks, anyway,” she says, and he hums.

“S’fine.” 

They sit together like that for a while longer, until Rey can no longer ignore her growling belly, and she gets up and insists that they go find dinner.

Since they don’t have a city map they wander for a while, watching people and peering in store windows, until Rey’s nose leads them to a little hole-in-the-wall that promises _The Best Ribs_ and _The Best Gooey Butter Cake_ , which is exactly what she wants. The piped-in blues music is a little too loud, but that seems fine because Rey doesn’t want to talk and it doesn’t look like Ben wants to, either. Rey tucks Archie on her lap under the table and eats her fill, the ribs are fall-off-the-bone tender and the gooey butter cake is better than she remembers it. Ben eats like Ben, he has a couple of ribs but focuses on his vegetable sides, greens and beans and a little salad. He spends most of his time looking around - out the window, not at her - and she’s desperately curious to know what he’s thinking. She wonders if it’s anything along the lines of what she is thinking, and she’s not _afraid_ to ask, exactly - she’s not afraid of anything - but she doesn’t really want to. If she’s wrong it would be so disappointing. She’d thought that she could read him pretty good, but it feels like he’s purposefully shutting her out and she doesn’t like that one bit. She likes him a lot, and after what happened the night before she thought they’d really hit something together. She takes her last bite of butter cake and leans back in her chair, tummy too-full, and looks at Ben while she contemplates the idea that’s been percolating all day, in the back of her brain. 

She continues to think about it while Ben pays for the meal with his Kylo Ren credit card, as they exit the cool air conditioned restaurant and return to the street, no less hot even though the sun has set. Ben leads them through the streets, following the occasional signs that lead them back to the MetroLink station, where they wait in silence for the train that will take them back out to the Clayton Transit Center, where the Winnebago waits for them. With a start Rey realizes the woman’s body is waiting there too, and she crosses her fingers and says a little prayer that it hasn’t started to stink; that would really mess up her plan for the evening. They really need to dispose of the body, but that can wait until tomorrow.

The ride back out is crowded and quiet, the train car full of other travelers making their way back to their cars, to go home or to hotels or wherever else they are going. Couples chat, small children whine and a baby cries towards the back, but Ben sits motionless, arms crossed with the plastic gift shop bag hooked around one of his wrists, and stares out the window. Rey doesn’t bother to hide how she watches him, thinking again about how he felt the day before, his skin soft and warm, his cock blissfully responsive and hard. How he wept, his tears hot and salty on her tongue. How he filled her up, the faces he made while she pleasured herself with him, how he cried out when he finally came. Not the way he usually did it, but she thinks he enjoyed it. She’s still curious about that, about his chosen method. She wants it, and if she can’t watch him do it, she can think of other options. She’s been thinking about it all day.

In what feels like no time at all they’re back at the transit center, and Rey and Ben exit the train car along with everybody else. The crowd quickly dissipates, until it’s just the two of them making their way between the parked cars, their path lit by the unnatural glow of sodium lights, towards the back corner where they left the RV so many hours before. As they approach Rey tucks Archie under her left arm and digs into her pocket for the key, keeping an eye on Ben as he stands several feet away, his jaw clenched, as he waits for her to open the door. She slides the key into the lock, but swings around to face him before she turns it.

“I want you to do it to me,” she says, and he finally looks at her. She knows the exact moment he understands what she means, because his eyes widen and his mouth falls open. She wants to laugh, and she normally would, but somehow this moment is too heavy for that, even for her. She wants him to say yes and she knows that anything she might do or say could spook him. 

He doesn’t say anything, instead he stares at her, working his jaw and breathing heavily through his nose. She curses the plastic bag, which hangs down from his stomach, blocking his groin. She can’t even tell if he’s excited by her suggestion.

“You don’t mean, uh…” he finally says.

“I don’t want you to kill me, if that’s what you mean. Just, knock me out for a while.”

“Okay then,” he says, relaxing. “Okay. Yeah. Sure, I can do that.”

“What will you need?”

He gestures his chin towards the RV. “I’ll tell you inside.”

She opens the door and he follows her up the stairs. She pauses at the top and sniffs experimentally, pleased to discover that, despite the heat, the body has not yet started to smell. Ben closes the door behind him and waits for her to unfold the sides of the RV and turn on the air conditioning. “We need to do something about that body,” he says to her when she walks by him, heading for the bedroom.

“We do,” she agrees. “But later?” She hopes he won’t decide to push the issue.

“Later,” he agrees, and sets the bag on the table. She finally takes her chance and peeks in, pulling out three tee shirts. Two of them are large, clearly meant for Ben; both are black, one has a stylized arch on the front and the other one also has an arch design, but it’s designed to look vintage. The third shirt is smaller, and yellow, and has the same stylized arch design as his shirt. If they wore the shirts at the same time, they would match. She tosses his shirts back in the bag, and tucks the yellow shirt under Archie, which she still grips close to her chest. 

They take turns in the bathroom. Rey goes first, taking her time on the toilet, wishing she hadn’t eaten quite so much for dinner, then she takes a quick shower before surrendering the space to Ben. By the time he’s out she’s sitting on the bed, legs folded under her, dressed in the same shorts and peasant shirt she was wearing earlier. She’s tucked Archie up behind the pillow, where she figures it can watch events unfold. He steps in with damp hair but wearing the same clothes he wore into the city as well, jeans and blue tee shirt, and his feet are bare. He sits on the end of the bed, turned slightly in her direction with his right knee on the mattress so he can face her. But he doesn’t say anything, just looks at her. At her face, into her eyes.

“So what do you need?” Rey finally asks. “I’ll get out whatever you need.”

His eyes flick down to her mouth and then back up to her eyes. “I can get it myself. Don’t you trust me?”

She laughs. “Not as far as I can throw you, no. I’ve hid your granddaddy’s syringe and I don’t want you to know where it is.”

“You’re going to have to get it out for me.”

She shrugs. “I’ll hide it again after. Still don’t want you to know where I keep it.”

He leans closer to her, resting on his hand. “But I could kill you.”

“You won’t.” She’s confident about that. 

He smirks at her and shakes his head. “You don’t trust me, but you trust me not to kill you? That doesn’t make any sense.” 

She crosses her arms with a flicker of annoyance.

“You said yesterday you don’t want to kill me, and I believe you. But there’s a lot of space between trusting you not to kill me and trusting you to know where the syringe is so you can use it any time you like.”

“What, so now you’re holding it for ransom?”

“You’re not gonna leave without it.”

“I’m not planning on leaving at all,” he snaps, clutching his hand in a white-knuckled fist in his lap. They breathe at each other for a minute or so, and eventually Rey’s heartbeat slows enough that she feels comfortable speaking again.

“I would feel better if you’d let me hold onto it when we’re not using it.”

He stares at her, working his jaw, and she’s afraid he’s going to say no. And she knows it’s a ridiculous request on its face. But then he says “okay,” and she breathes again.

“And I want it,” she continues. “I want to know how you do your thing.” _I want to know how it feels to be yours_ , she thinks, but can’t bring herself to say it to him. She hates the heat in her cheeks, and looks down at her lap so she doesn’t have to look at his face.

“You won’t remember it,” he says softly, sitting back, but she shrugs.

“I’ll feel it when I wake up though,” she murmurs, and manages a glance up. “I’ll know it happened.” 

“Okay,” he says. “Okay,” and he rubs his hands together. “I’ll need the goggles, a pair of gloves, the ether, and a cloth. A bottle of morphine. My syringe, of course, and one of those rubber tourniquet tubes. The bottle of lube. A skein of rope. And, uh, condoms.” His cheeks flush and he rubs the back of his neck. “Just leave out the box?”

“No rope,” she insists, shaking her head.

“I need it to help position your body—”

“No rope or we aren’t doing it,” she says again, and it’s final. She’s thinking about what she did to him the night before, and there’s no way in hell she’s going to give him the opportunity to do the same thing to her. She can tell the moment that he makes the connection, his eyes widen for a moment and he opens his mouth in a silent gesture of epiphany. 

“Right,” he says. “Right. I’ll work around it.”

“Okay,” she says. “No fentanyl?”

He shakes his head. “Too easy to overdose, which I don’t—” he stops and shakes his head. “The ether will knock you out, and the morphine will relax you, make you loopy, just in case you wake up from the ether before I’m done.” He pauses and laughs, a high, slightly hysterical cackle. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

“Is it bad?”

“No,” he says, standing up and rubbing his palms on his thighs. “Just... really weird. Anyway, I’ll…” he points out the door before stepping out, closing the door behind him.

Rey calls him back in just a few minutes later, the requested items laid out at the end of the bed. She watches him carefully as he examines each item in turn, before pulling on the gloves and reverently opening the metal case to pull out the syringe and one of the needles. As he fits the needle onto the end of the barrel, Rey sits up on her knees and pulls off her shirt, tossing it to the floor. She isn’t wearing a bra, and the chill of the AC makes her nipples pebble immediately. She delights in the way Ben freezes, and watches her lie on her back and stretch her arms up towards the head of the bed.

“What?” She asks innocently, her hands migrating to the button of her shorts.

“What are you doing?”

“You’re gonna be fucking me, Ben, I figure that’s easier if I’m naked?”

“Yes, but usually I—” she doesn’t wait to hear the rest, she quickly unbuttons and unzips her shorts, then holds her legs up in the air, lifts her hips and pulls shorts and panties up and off - hopefully giving Ben a nice view of her backside on the way. Her clothes join her shirt on the floor and when she looks back at him he’s still staring, not moving, eyes wide behind goggles and glasses. She lets her knees fall open and places her right hand behind her head while her left one rests on her belly, just above where her pubic hair begins. 

“Usually you what, Ben?” 

This is so much better than whatever was happening between them ever since they left the Gateway Arch. The way he’s looking at her, like he can’t quite believe it. Like she is everything he needs; like despite the fact that he holds her life in his hands, he recognizes that she has the power - and he wants her. She likes Archie, and she has to admit that having Ben care for her after she fell down was nice, but she doesn’t want to be beholden to anybody, not even to Ben. Having the upper hand, keeping him off-kilter like this; that’s much more comfortable for her.

“Usually I undress them myself,” he says, and finishes attaching the needle. 

“What are you gonna do to me?” She scratches at her pubic hair, and Ben picks up the little bottle of morphine and frowns at it.

“What do you want me to do to you?”

“Uh-uh,” she says, toying lower, fingertip reaching through her curls to graze across her clit. “I’ve never done this before and you’ve done it at least thirty-four times. You tell me what you do.”

“Okay, you asked. I am going to put an ether-soaked cloth over your face.” He pulls out the plunger to suck in the drug. “And then I’m going to tie that tube around your arm and inject you with this morphine.”

“Put the syringe on the shelf when you’re done,” Rey says. “I’ll put it away tomorrow.”

“I’ll do that,” he agrees, glancing up at her as he pulls the needle out and sets the morphine bottle back on the mattress. “And then, once you’re unconscious, I guess I’m going to do whatever I want.”

Rey pushes two fingers down, one on each side of her clit, and thinks about Ben doing whatever he wants with her body while she’s unconscious. She watches him watch her hand as it moves between her legs.

“Seriously, Rey, is there anything you don’t want me to do?”

She tears her eyes away from him and looks over at the wall. There’s a small hole in the paneling; the Bergmans had a picture that hung there, a watercolor of a sunset that she burned after she killed them. She’s never had anal sex, although she’s come close, and the thought of Ben doing that to her is an incredible turn-on. “Fuck me however you want, Ben. Please don’t hold back.”

“Can I bite you?” 

An image pops fully formed in her mind, an image of Ben, naked, looming over her, her eyes closed, mouth open, his teeth pressed into her shoulder, and Rey presses her fingers into the slick skin of her labia. 

“Yeah,” she says. “You can bite me.”

“I won’t bite you too hard,” he says, and she can hear him moving around, the smooth sound of a bottle cap being unwound. “I won’t draw blood.”

“It would be okay if you did,” she says softly, and he hums, accompanied by the soft slosh of liquid against glass.

“Can I smack you?”

“Get me back for smacking you last night?”

“I like the way it sounds.” His voice has moved; he’s standing next to her now, closer to the head of the bed. “Skin against skin. But I won’t do it so hard it leaves a mark.”

“Leave a mark,” she breathes, fingertips rubbing now, warmth growing between her legs, heartbeat speeding up with excitement. “Leave a mark, Ben, leave a—” one large hand grabs her hair, another roughly presses a sweet-smelling cloth into her face, and Rey snaps. She kicks her legs, but there’s nothing for them to hit except the mattress; her feet bounce and her hands grasp at Ben’s arms, but he is in his element. She struggles, punches, rakes her nails across his arms. She opens her mouth and yells, tries to bite him but only ends up taking in a mouthful of fabric laced with chemicals, which can’t possibly be good. But he holds her head tightly, murmuring words that sound sweet but which she can’t understand over the rushing of her own frenzied heartbeat. In less than a moment, everything goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: Rey falls down and scratches her knees; Rey and Ben agree that Ben can render Rey unconscious and have sex with her, and they begin that process; the usual thoughts of murder and necrophilia.**
> 
> [City Museum](https://www.citymuseum.org/)
> 
> The outside playground:  
> 
> 
> Thanks to all of you for your continued excitement about this fic, it means the world to me!


	9. Marking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week's Murder Church sermon is about the discomfort of knowing and being known. 
> 
> Previously on _The Ride:_  
>  Rey and Ben went to the City Museum  
> They had ribs for dinner  
> Rey asked Ben to knock her out and fuck her
> 
> This fic picks up exactly where chapter 8 leaves off from Ben's point of view. If you don't want to read Ben's point of view, you can read the warnings in the end notes and then proceed to Rey's section. 
> 
> Please note as well that there are some new tags: **Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm and Cutting**. That's all in the past but it's heavily referenced and past events are described. If you are triggered by scars/mentions of past wounds you should skip from the paragraph that begins "The underside of her breast..." to the end of Ben's section, and then from the paragraph that begins "Ben found her scars" to the paragraph that begins "Was I good?". There are other tags that apply to this chapter (including a new Anal Sex tag) so please check them again before reading.
> 
> Content warnings in the end notes.

Ether is step one. Ben holds the cloth against Rey’s face until she stops moving, until her useless clawing and kicking ceases, and then for a moment longer. This is one of Ben’s favorite parts of the ritual, when the fight is gone from her, leaving him alone with her body. There’s something very special about having a woman at your mercy, and Ben takes his time, pressing his ear against her chest as he feels her breathing and her heartbeat starting to slow, listening as her body makes itself ready to take him. He picks up Rey’s clothes and tosses them in a little plastic hamper along with the ether-soaked cloth before moving on to the ritual’s next step, the injection. 

He takes a moment to admire Rey. She lies on top of the bedclothes, naked and limp, and her hair spreads across the pillows like a crown. _So beautiful_ , he thinks as he ties the tourniquet around her upper arm and searches for a vein. She could be a queen. She could be _his_ queen. He rubs her skin with his fingertips, all the way down to her hand, so small compared to his own, and finds its warmth and smoothness delightful even through the nitrile gloves. She has lovely veins, and it doesn’t take long before he finds a good one and injects the morphine - just enough to keep her relaxed, not enough to hurt her. He toys with her fingers while the drug feeds into her vein, thinking about how she holds the knife, an almost natural extension of her arm. She is capable of such beautiful violence, and here she is, naked and submitting to him. He removes the needle from the syringe and carefully places both objects on the shelf where she’ll be sure to see them when she wakes up the next morning. He frowns down at them and tries to ignore the itch in his brain telling him _this is wrong, this isn’t the way_ ; he wants to put them away in their case, where they belong, and the change to his ritual annoys and distracts him.

Step three would normally be to undress her, but Rey had already done that herself. Another twinge of annoyance, with not a small amount of regret, passes through Ben as he moves on to step four. He removes his own clothes, tee shirt and jeans and boxers, but leaves the gloves and goggles on. This is a bit different than usual, too, because Ben never wears jeans and tee shirts when he does his thing, he wears crisp white button-downs and pressed slacks - cotton in the summer, wool in the winter - but like every other thing that’s different today, it isn’t quite enough to totally throw him off.

Step four is the first marking, and after that... things tend to happen more impulsively; he’ll fuck, and mark, and fuck some more. The methods he uses for both fucking and marking depend mostly on his mood, but to some extent on the anatomy of the woman; it’s hard to titty-fuck a small-breasted woman, although if Ben’s in the mood he’ll certainly try. He revels in being thorough with his experiments. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as Grandfather Anakin used to say.

He decides against trying to titty-fuck Rey tonight; her breasts are small and he’s not sure he has the time. There are other, more important things he wants to do, though he certainly isn’t planning to leave her breasts entirely untouched. He’ll fuck her pussy first, and then her ass, and if he’s up for it he’ll use her mouth, and then he’ll do it again until he can’t any more. But before any of that can happen he needs to mark her. He needs to make her _his_.

For the first marking he’ll masturbate on her, then rub his cum into her skin. Once she’s properly covered, he’ll take her. He didn’t have control over what happened earlier, when he had no choice but to touch her in order to tend to her wounds. He tries not to think about it too hard as he crawls up between her legs and lifts her ass up onto his knees; the movement forces her legs further apart and angles her backside up, pushing her knees up to her shoulders, exposing the slick pink of her labia. The scent of her assaults him. It takes him back to the night before; sure, a part of him had eventually liked it, but the experience had been more than just humiliating. She’d tied him up and violated him even though he’d begged her not to, and he _let her do it_. He’s been consciously avoiding thinking about it all day, choosing instead to concentrate on making sure they had a good day sightseeing and really, how fucked up is that? He should have talked to her about it. He should have talked to her, should have yelled at her, to let her know exactly how he felt about _that_. She raped him, and he let her get away with it. And then, _and then_ , she had the audacity to tell him he couldn’t use the rope on her, _and_ she used Grandfather’s syringe as a pawn in their negotiations. Those things are _his_ , and his alone. And just like that the maelstrom of Ben’s emotions burst out, filling him with a rage he hasn’t felt in a long time. To hell with the masturbating, he’s going to show her what happens to a woman who crosses Ben Solo.

He grabs one of the strips of condoms out of the box and rips one off with his teeth; he’s so violent with it that it rips one of the packets open with it. He fishes it out and quickly rolls it on his cock, which is now raging hard, as hot and red as his anger. He grips the base and rakes his eyes over Rey before lining himself up with her cunt and plunging in without delay. He didn’t bother with lube and there’s a part of him that hopes she’ll get burned without it, but once he’s inside he discovers that she wasn’t faking her excitement; she’s very wet and slick and he doesn’t have to adjust before thrusting into her again, so hard it shifts her hips up the bed. She feels amazing, hot and tight and wet, and it doesn’t escape Ben that she’s wet because she was thinking about him doing this to her and that drives him on, too; his anger and his lust merging into something new. He fucks her hard, pulling all the way out and then plunging back in, harsh on purpose. She needs to feel this when she wakes up, needs to know that he was in her, that he used her just as much as she used him. He pushes her so far up the bed that he eventually has to pull her back down the mattress so she doesn’t hit the headboard. His knees are starting to feel warm from rubbing against the sheets, hopefully the same thing is happening to Rey’s back. Another reminder for her of what he did to her; another way for her to bear his mark. 

Ben’s orgasm turns out to be more elusive than he expected it to be, so he digs into the rage in an attempt to reach towards it, but it doesn’t work out the way he wants it to. Thoughts of how humiliating it was to be tied up and used by Rey shift almost imperceptibly to the memory of how delightful her breathing sounded as she was rubbing her cunt against his kneecap. Instead he tries focusing on the syringe, on how angry he is about her keeping it away from him, but it just makes him think about Rey’s knife, the fear and excitement he feels when she holds it close to him, how much he wants to see her wield it. He hates that he’s afraid of her, even when she’s unconscious and entirely at his mercy, hates that it still feels as though she’s in control of him; but the worst part, the part he hates the most, is that he _doesn’t_ hate it. And it’s that - Ben’s rage at himself for not being sufficiently upset about how Rey makes him feel - that finally has him feeling like his orgasm is imminent. He leans over her, his left hand on the pillow next to her head - the plush arch sitting there like a spectator - while his right hand holds her thigh up, and he watches her breasts bounce while her limp body jerks as he fucks into her as hard as he can. Something on her left breast catches his eye, and he’s so shocked that he stops mid-thrust to get a closer look. 

The underside of her breast is covered with scars. He hadn’t noticed them, in the darkness and disorientation of the night before, but in the harsh ceiling lighting they are impossible to miss. Made with a sharp blade, perhaps a razor, long cuts that go across with shorter ones overlapping them. They’re old, raised pink skin with no more of the angry, painful red that Ben imagines must have been present when the cuts were fresh. His impending orgasm quickly forgotten, Ben peels off his gloves and tosses them to the ground, the goggles quickly following. His glasses he folds carefully and sets up on the shelf over the headboard; he wants to be able to see these scars. From up close it’s clear that Rey’s breast wasn’t cut just once. There are several layers of these criss-crossing scars; one set of cuts had been allowed to heal and then another set were carved over the old scars. He can see three layers clearly, but thinks there might even be four; the cuts are messy, not carefully made, so it’s a bit hard to tell. It must have been extremely painful for Rey every time; the normally delicate, tender skin is thickened and tough, and Ben suspects that the wound wasn’t treated with the care it deserved, leading to worse scarring than would have been otherwise. 

Ben knows that Rey’s led a hard life. From the bare snippets she’s shared about her life story - raised by an abusive foster father - to little things she says and does - laughing about almost being sold to pay off a drug debt - he _knows_. But it’s not until this moment, not until he’s faced with a physical mark on Rey’s body, that he really _understands_. Someone did this to her, someone _hurt her_ , and the incontrovertible evidence of it brings up in him a cold horror, and a new, very particular kind of rage that is wholly unique in Ben’s experience. He wants to do something, to hurt whoever did this to Rey, to fix it and make it better the way he fixed Rey’s knees at the museum earlier in the day. But there’s nothing to be done here, the past is the past and these wounds are old, scarred over years before. So Ben does the only thing he can; Ben marks.

He’s never done anything like this before so he lets instinct be his guide. He starts with his tongue, imagining that he can soothe her scarred skin the way a mother cat cleans her kitten’s fur. When he’s sure his tongue has touched every bit of scarring he kisses them, sweet kisses that grow more eager as his lips familiarize themselves with the texture of her scarred skin. He uses his teeth next, as though he might be able to bite her scars off and find smooth, untouched skin underneath. He tries not to nip too hard but it’s difficult. He covers each imprint of his teeth with another kiss, sucking that same flesh between his lips, then soothing it over with a stroke of his tongue. Over and over again; bite, kiss, lick, bite, kiss, lick. It’s a mantra that Ben loses himself in, until a quickly-muted car alarm out in the parking lot brings him back to the present. He has no idea how long he’d been tending to Rey’s breast before that, and he leans back to take in the sight of his handiwork. Her entire lower breast is a giant bruise, the light criss-cross of the scars now invisible under the purple and red and occasional impression of Ben’s teeth. His cock is still hard inside Rey; he’d completely forgotten about it but seeing her body covered in the marks he’d given her makes him come suddenly, so hard that he sees stars in the corners of his eyes.

Before he can even see straight, Ben pulls out of her and carefully slips the condom off. He squeezes the contents out into the valley between Rey’s breasts. Coating his fingers with the warm, sticky fluid, he gently rubs it over the scarred, bruised skin of her breast until he’s satisfied that every last drop of his cum is where it belongs. 

Ben has only come once but he’s already exhausted. It will take some time to get hard again - he’s always been proud of his refractory period, but he’s feeling tired and strange and he knows his body’s limits. He decides to spend this downtime getting to know more of Rey’s body. He fondles her right breast, which is untouched by the violence that sullies her left one. It’s soft, and the skin is tender and sweet, her nipple a dusky brown that awakens delightfully when he closes his lips around it. He normally revels in the lack of response, but today, with Rey, he takes his time to savor how her nipple hardens when he licks and blows softly over it. She’d played with her breasts the night before; he wonders if she’d like it if he did this to her if she was awake. He marks this breast too, with kisses and bites, enjoying how his marks glow against her pale skin.

He makes his way down her torso, leaving a trail of marks, and when he reaches her right hip he discovers more scars, this time it’s a cluster of round burn marks - he’s certain these were made by the lit end of a cigarette - and again he feels the horror and rage take hold. He covers these scars the same way he did the scars on her breast, biting and sucking and licking until the only visible marks are the ones he gave her. By the time he’s done he’s hard again, and he feels ready to try something different. The lube had fallen off the bed during Rey’s struggle, so Ben has to climb off of her to find it, and he takes the opportunity to grab a towel from the bathroom. He tucks it under Rey’s behind as he gets back into position and makes himself comfortable. He sets her ass up on his knees and massages her cheeks first; she’s a thin woman but what extra fat she has is concentrated in her butt and he enjoys how her muscles give under his fingers, how her ass jiggles when he smacks it with his palm. Coating his fingers with lube he preps her asshole more carefully than he normally would, taking the time to appreciate her warmth, enjoying how her muscles respond to his fingers prodding and scissoring inside her. He wonders if she’s ever done this before -although if she has he doubts she’d liked it. 

It’s a sobering thought, and Ben takes a moment to attempt to process his warring emotions where Rey is concerned. He knows he’s still angry at her, but that anger has been tempered by his discovery of her previous injuries. He no longer has a desire to hurt her, but he still wants her to feel _used_. Once he’s satisfied with the amount of lube and the looseness of her muscles he doesn’t waste time before pushing all the way in. Her muscles respond to the intrusion by contracting around him, and he gasps at the unfamiliar but undeniably agreeable sensation. He looks down to where their bodies are joined as he starts to move, and finds that her cunt is still shining with arousal. He presses his thumb against her clit, rubs it gently, and her muscles move again, her empty cunt clenching on nothing as a drop of fluid runs out of it and lands on his cock. He pushes in again, taking the fluid with him, and continues rubbing her clit. Rey may be unconscious but her body is awake and highly responsive, and as far as Ben can tell her body likes what he’s doing to it. He fucks her ass slowly, much more slowly than he usually would, and keeps rubbing her clit; he’s mesmerized by the way her body supplements the lube with glistening fluid that drips from her pussy like honey from a beehive. He wishes he was on his boat, he has a Canon EOS that he used sometimes to document his work. _Had_ one, he reminds himself; another loss to the FBI. He doesn’t even have a cellphone camera, since they left the dead woman’s phone in some bushes in the Walmart parking lot. So he’ll just have to keep the memory in his head. When Ben eventually comes he’s thinking about the sounds that Rey made when she came on his cock the night before, and any residual rage he had is gone by the time he spends into the condom. He squeezes that one over the scars on her hip, massaging it in until they’re completely covered.

He takes only seconds to rest before returning to her body; he continues working his way down, licking and kissing and biting, down from her hip to her thigh, then to her knee, and then all the way back up to her cunt. He’s never willingly put his face so close to a cunt before - they’ve always been for fingers and cocks, never for mouths. Rey’s scent is heady and reminds him of his humiliation, but that doesn’t keep him from wanting to taste it. He laps up the fluid from around her cunt first, and then works his way up through her labia before he latches onto her clit and suckles. She tastes good, salty and earthy and sweet, and he pulls her legs over his shoulders and imagines her holding his head between her thighs, her ankles hooked behind his back, her fingers gripping and pulling his hair to hold him against her. She’d make those noises again, if he does it well. After a few minutes Ben pulls away with a sigh, grabs another condom, and is delighted and a little amazed to find that her cunt is slick and wet again. He lays on top of her this time, careful not to crush her, and gently rolls his hips; he experiments with angles, finding what feels good to him while imagining what might feel good to her. Their faces are so close now, and he tries kissing her, first her cheeks and then her mouth - another thing he’s never done before. Her lips are soft but he doesn’t like the lack of response, so he only kisses her a few times before resting his forehead against hers until he’s finished. His body is spent, and so is his anger. He empties the last condom on her inner thighs, and rubs it in a thin layer to coat every bit of skin from her knees to her pussy. 

Ben is aware that time is passing and that Rey won’t stay asleep for too much longer, and after the long day and the initial excitement his energy is running thin. He takes the time he has left to examine every inch of Rey’s skin, and every place he finds a scar - too many of them for someone so young - he bites and kisses and licks until he’s fixed each one. 

It’s almost midnight before Ben finally sits back and decides that his work is done. She’s just as beautiful as she was when he started, but now she’s better. Her scars are mended, he’s marked her well. She’s his. He hopes she’ll be pleased when she wakes up.

* * *

Rey returns to consciousness slowly. It’s not clear to her how long she swims in the hazy twilight behind her eyes before she even realizes she’s awake. But as soon as she has this epiphany, she becomes aware that she’s warm; so warm, her whole body is enveloped in a soft heat. She doesn't know where she is but she somehow knows that she is safe, which is unusual. She takes a moment to revel in it. Something soft and squishy is in her arms and she clutches it against her chest. As she does this a dull pain blooms in her left breast, the first sign that all is not well.

She lies still for a while longer, and as the seconds pass she becomes more aware that some of the warmth she feels is due to soreness that criss-crosses her body. Her thighs, hips, stomach, the round globes of her ass, and higher, her neck and shoulders and breasts - especially her breasts - all of them suffer from this mysterious dull pain. She groans as she attempts to roll from her side onto her back, thinking that position might be more comfortable. The shifting makes her aware of another ache, something deeper, focused on the area between her legs. At the same time the warmth that doesn’t hurt moans and pulls her closer, and she remembers where she is. She’s in Saint Louis, in the Winnebago, in the bed, and the last thing she remembers is Ben Solo holding her down and pressing an ether-soaked cloth against her face, so he could fuck her while she was unconscious. _Because you asked him to_. Her body jolts at the thought, and freezes, and her mind races to catch up.

What she’s feeling isn’t fear. Rey doesn't get to be afraid, and even if she did she has no reason to fear Ben. She could have died; he could have killed her. But she didn’t think that he would, and clearly he didn’t. She wanted him to take her the way he did; she asked for it, and she was looking forward to waking up so she could have him explain exactly what he’d done to her in great detail. The idea of doing that had turned her on even more than the idea of him fucking her did. But her body hurts; she hadn’t considered that. She’s been beaten up before, used roughly and tossed away. She knows physical pain and it doesn’t usually bother her, but this does, and she hates that it does. Her stomach churns unpleasantly.

“Are you awake?” Ben’s voice is behind her, so close that she can feel the heat of his breath on the crown of her head. He’s holding her close but she’s underneath the blanket, it covers her body all the way up her neck, and he’s on top of the blanket, so he’s not touching her skin. She’s slightly amused; first, that he has figured out a way to hold her close without breaking his personal taboo, and second, that he’s even bothering. He’s seen her naked, and he’s touched her naked. He’s fucked her; she can feel the evidence of that now, a soreness between her legs and inside her, too, from her ass and her cunt up her body to the throbbing ache in her left breast. She presses her thighs together experimentally, and something sloshes at the apex. She grumbles - she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t think she can speak coherently yet - but Ben seems to be able to tell from her movements what she’s noticing. 

“I put an ice pack down there before I tucked you in, it’ll be all water by now,” he says, and he sits up behind her. She immediately misses his warmth, his weight, but before she can figure out how to complain he’s off the bed and kneeling in front of her. The lights in the room are off but she can see him in the light that filters in from outside; the fake orange of the parking lot’s sodium lights, not the light of day. He’s dressed again, back in his jeans, and in one of the shirts he purchased the previous day, the one with the stylized Arch. His hair is damp. He’s not wearing his glasses. She tries to sit up, too, but the movement kicks something behind her eyes and she has to close them and lie back down.

“Slowly, sweetheart. Take your time.” His use of the endearment feels a bit like being punched, and Rey works to calm herself as Ben pulls the blanket down and off of her. It’s only then that she realizes that she is clothed, too, wearing a pair of pajama shorts and Ben’s own sweater; the one that she sliced through, the one that she wore to bed the night before. Ben knocked her unconscious and had his way with her, and then he dressed her in his sweater and tucked her into bed and put an ice pack against her cunt so she wouldn’t be too sore. His kindness is so strange, so unusual in Rey’s experience that it’s almost overwhelming, and she wants to hate it, to hate _him_ , but she just can’t. 

He removes the former ice pack - now a Ziploc bag full of lukewarm water - from between her legs, and pulls another one that she hadn’t noticed from under her left arm. 

“The morphine should have mostly worn off by now but your head may still be a bit fuzzy. And you may feel sick to your stomach. I have a glass of water here, and a granola bar I found in one of the cabinets, if you’re thirsty or hungry.”

She accepts the water, and he helps her to sit up, holds the glass to her lips while she takes sips, keeping her eyes tightly closed lest another bout of nausea overcome her. But the water helps, and the two bites of granola bar helps, and when she opens her eyes again he’s on his knees at her feet, looking up at her and smiling. The cold gleam of metal catches her eye, and she looks over his shoulder at the small shelf behind him.

“You left it there,” she says, her voice sounding more like the croak of a frog. 

He nods, and doesn’t look back at where his syringe lies, needle removed, set on top of the metal case so she can see it from the bed.

“I told you I would.”

The wave of pleasure she feels at being right to trust him washes over her, and for the second time in just a few minutes she’s struck by how strange she’s feeling. 

“I have to pee,” she says, and she starts to stand but stumbles and Ben reaches for her, holds her steady until he stands, too, then he takes her by the elbow and slowly leads her towards the door. She feels tired and weak, like she has cotton in her head, like her limbs are longer than they usually are. But with his help she makes it to the bathroom; he leaves her at the door, and closes it behind her. 

The face that stares back at her in the mirror is unfamiliar. She recognizes parts of herself - the shape and color of her eyes, the curve of her mouth, the way her hair sticks out around her face - but the whole of her looks different. There are dark shadows under her eyes, and her lips are chapped. She opens her mouth, shuts it, puffs out her cheeks, and the face in the mirror does the same. She turns her head and examines the side of her neck. A purple mark peeks out from behind the collar of Ben’s fucking cashmere sweater, and she prods it gently. It complains quietly. She turns away from the mirror and makes an effort not to look into it again.

She uses the toilet next, and decides to clean herself in the shower because the toilet paper is too rough against her tender skin. She doesn’t pay much attention when she undresses, focused on her need to get into the water, but she takes the trouble to pile her clothes on top of the closed toilet instead of just kicking them into the corner. The water she keeps cool, because even though the air conditioning is turned quite low she feels hot, almost fevered. _It’s because of all the bruises_ , she thinks; all the blood held hot close to her skin, she knows this. She’d asked for marks without understanding exactly what she was asking for; there are bruises and bite marks all over her body, from her knees up her chest and she’s pretty sure on her neck as well. They make her think of the symbols that farmers press into the flesh of their cows using hot metal, so if different herds are mixed together it’s possible to separate them out later. Ben has branded her, and Rey is shocked by how much she doesn’t mind the idea of that, especially considering she’s been branded in the past. 

She doesn’t bother with soap but she twists under the spray, letting it run through her hair and over her face, down her back and into the crack of her ass which is so very sore. She reaches between her cheeks and prods gently at the muscle, which complains bitterly at her attentions; she has no doubt he fucked her there, maybe more than once. She wonders how he looked while he was doing it.

She runs her hands over her body to help the water spread, and they slide in a peculiar way; she’s been coated with something, and Rey thinks that perhaps Ben covered her with lube until the more likely answer occurs to her: it’s probably cum. She noticed the condoms in the bathroom trash can while she was undressing - she didn’t count them but there were quite a few - and she imagines him pulling out and slipping the condom off just before coming on her, leaving pools and streaks of it against her skin, then using his long, strong, gentle fingers to rub the stuff in. Even though she’s sore, the thought causes a pulse of arousal to throb briefly between her legs. It’s only when she lifts her left arm to rinse that she understands why her left breast is so damn sore.

Ben found her scars. She hadn’t really been thinking about them; they’re a thing she did for a time, they served their purpose and now they’re as much a part of her as her limbs are, but of course they would be news to him. And the reason she’s sore - for the first time in years she feels pain there - is because he’s chewed them up and covered them with bruises. She thinks they’re hickeys, or maybe he pinched with his fingers. Either way he was thorough, and although she can trace the underlying scars with her fingers, from her angle they aren’t visible through the purple mess that Ben made. There’s also a thick layer of cum over all of it, and Rey is gentle with herself as she uses her fingertips to help the cool water wash it away. The bruises stay.

On a wild whim Rey checks her hips, where the clusters of cigarette burns mar her flesh, and finds them treated the same way. She rubs her thumbs over them, tracing the familiar raised scars, now covered by Ben. With trembling hands she catalogues the rest of her past wounds. There’s the deep scar on the back of her arm from when Plutt tried to stab her with a screwdriver; it would have been much worse if she hadn’t moved so fast. She remembers how he’d refused to take her to the hospital and after she’d bled through three sets of bandages she’d ended up going to the neighbor’s, a little old woman who’d done her best to sew up the wound and had given her a stale cookie from an old tin as a treat. She runs her hand down the back of her leg and thinks about Plutt’s dog, a mean thing that he kicked around and didn’t give enough to eat, and about how the dog would occasionally try to take a bite out of her and sometimes succeeded. She thinks about how she used to stay out past curfew, even knowing that Plutt would be mad, but if she was lucky by the time she got back he’d have drunk himself into a stupor. But there was that one time she got caught in barbed wire trying to climb over the fence and Plutt had beaten her for bleeding all over him once he’d heard her screaming and helped her down. All these events and more had made themselves known on Rey’s flesh, and it felt like Ben had found and bruised over every single one of them.

Rey leans her back against the wall of the shower stall and slides until she’s sitting on the molded plastic floor. She’s shaking and she doesn’t understand why. She doesn’t hurt like this; she hasn’t felt pain in years. But she’s feeling _something_ and she doesn’t know what to do with it. It’s like there’s an animal inside her and it’s desperately trying to claw its way out.

The next thing she knows Ben is there. He turns off the shower and picks her up like a baby, carries her back into the dark bedroom, not seeming to care that she’s drenched. He murmurs the whole time, but it’s hard to hear through the sound of her own sobbing. Rey can’t remember the last time she cried, and she hates it, being this way in front of Ben, but she can’t stop. He doesn’t really do anything, though; he doesn’t ask her to stop, or try to touch her beyond what it takes to wrap her wet, naked body in the bedclothes, tucking Archie into her arms, and then he lies behind her, arm wrapped around her like it was when she woke up, and he coos into the back of her head until she’s wrung out and quiet.

“Did I do something wrong?” He finally asks, after the seconds of silence have drawn out to minutes. “Should I not have done it?”

Rey isn’t sure what Ben means by _it_ , if _it_ is fucking her while she was unconscious or if _it_ is finding all her scars and marking them with his own brand, like he owns her or something. But it doesn’t matter because her answer to both questions is the same.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she says. “You did perfect.”

“I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt me.” She answers quickly, automatically, but then she thinks about it and she has to ask. “Did you want to hurt me?”

He’s quiet for several long moments, and she can imagine how he might be moving his jaw as he brings words into his mouth, tries them out, finds them lacking, then chews them up and swallows them only to be replaced with different words to try. It’s almost too dark to see but she can sense his hand, at the end of his long arm which drapes over her waist. He clutches it into a fist and then relaxes it - one, two, three times. Eventually he answers her.

“I did, at first. I was angry after last night.”

“Because I raped you.”

“Yes. And because I liked it. That was worse, actually. But I wouldn’t have had to deal with liking it if you hadn’t done it to me.”

“I get that, Ben,” she says, and he gives her a little squeeze.

“I know you do.”

Rey cuddles Archie, rubs his soft felt against her cheek. “You said you wanted to hurt me at first. What changed your mind?”

“I found the scars on your breast, and then the other ones. So many scars, Rey. I couldn’t hurt you after that.”

“Were you still mad?”

“I was angry, yes, and I still am. I will be angry about that for a while. But I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Okay.” She squeezes Archie again, pushes him against her left breast and takes note of the soreness there. It’s not as bad as it was before her shower but it’s still noticeable. 

“Who hurt you, Rey?” Ben whispers the question, as though he’s not sure he wants her to hear it.

“Lots of people hurt me.” She thinks she knows the question he really wants to ask and she dreads it, dreads having to answer it because she _will_ , she’s going to tell the truth and she has no idea what he’ll think after she does. Maybe he’ll hate her, or think she’s too messed up. But for some reason she absolutely refuses to lie to him about this. Maybe it’s a test, but whether it’s a test for her or for him, she has no idea.

“Your breast. Who did that to your breast?” 

“I did it to myself,” she answers, too loudly, her own voice overlapping with Ben’s. “I did that so I could teach myself not to hurt, to teach myself to ignore pain. I did it and it worked, okay?”

Ben doesn’t say anything for a long time. Rey’s heart beats too fast, and she feels too cold, she can’t move. She is feeling a lot of something but she doesn’t know what it is. She is thinking about what would happen if Ben pulled his arm back, if he rolled away from her and stood up and walked out of the room. What she would feel then. What she might do. She realizes that she doesn’t know where her boot is, where her knife is. She clutches Archie and breathes in his woolly scent and wishes she had her knife with her too.

But Ben doesn’t leave, he doesn’t even move. He just lays there, breathing into the back of her head, until eventually he speaks.

“Is that true?”

“I’m not _lying_ ,” she spits, and he tuts softly and pulls her closer, shimmying so the front of his body is pressed up against her back.

“You know that’s not what I meant. I know you’re telling the truth about what you did. What I mean is: is it true that you don’t hurt?”

Rey can’t answer that question. It’s not that she doesn’t want to lie, or that she can’t lie; she just doesn’t know the answer. So she doesn’t say anything. She picks at Archie’s felt, at his eyes and his smile and the red heart on his leg. She watches Ben’s hand as it clenches into a fist and releases again, and she listens to him breathe and feels his heat soaking through the blanket and into her back. 

She thinks he might have some follow up, something like _it’s okay, you don’t have to answer that_ , which she knows - she isn’t going to answer so she doesn’t have to answer _obviously_ , but when he does finally say something it’s so unexpected that it brings her thought spiral to a standstill.

“Was I good?” This is what Ben says.

Rey understands that Ben is making himself vulnerable to her, now, and she can hear in his voice just how much he needs her validation. Part of her wants to laugh out loud, but another part - a larger part - wants to give it to him.

“You were so good, Ben. So good. You’re a…” she pauses, feeling a bit ridiculous for what she’s about to say, but pushing through for his sake. “You’re a good boy. _Such_ a good boy.”

He takes a breath, so quickly that it’s almost a gasp, and he makes a noise as though he’s about to say something but before he can they’re interrupted by a knock on the door of the Winnebago.

Rey is out of the bed in less than a second, on the ground, feeling around for her boots. Ben is slower but he stands quickly; she can see him frozen by the bedroom door, staring out into the main room, his stance low and full of energy, like a cat that’s thinking about pouncing. 

The knock comes again, followed by a shout. “Is there anybody in there? The parking isn’t overnight, you need to leave or I’ll have to impound your vehicle.”

Ben swoops down and grabs Rey by the shoulders and she swears and pulls away. His eyes are wide and bright and full of fear. “You need to answer the door,” he whispers loudly. “I can’t answer the door. What if he recognizes me?”

Rey growls at him and gestures down to her body, which is both completely naked and covered with bruises and imprints of Ben’s teeth. “Oh, really, you want me to answer the door? Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Ben stares down and flinches, realizing what a bad idea that would be. She keeps going while she returns to her task of searching out her boot. “It’s not like you were walking all over Saint Louis today. Where was your worry then? _I_ wasn’t worried about it.”

“You don’t worry about anything,” he answers shortly, running his hand through his hair. “And I wasn’t thinking about it.”

“Weren’t thinking about it, right. Anyway, he won’t recognize you. It’s dark, and he’s a fucking security guard, it’s not like he’s a cop.”

This news seems to calm Ben a bit, and when the knocking comes a third time he hops up and out the door at the same time that Rey finds her right boot and pulls her knife out of its scabbard; she feels almost normal for the first time all day. Instead of dressing she pulls the top blanket off the bed and wraps it around her neck like a cape, hiding the knife under the folds of fabric, and moves to the doorway. She knows that Ben would prefer her to stay back in the bedroom but she wants to be ready, just in case it all goes sideways. Her fingers twitch around the handle as Ben yells, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” takes the step down, and pushes the door open. Rey can’t see but she can hear enough of what follows. 

“Yes, sir… we were tired after coming back and took a nap… yes sir... My girlfriend and I, sir.” Every time Ben says _sir_ Rey gets a little more annoyed, her hand gripping the knife harder, itching for an excuse to use it. If the guy would come inside, if he would just look at her below the neck, that would be enough. Rey’s blood is hot and her heart beats frantically and when Ben says “goodnight,” closes the door, and comes back up into the body of the vehicle, _disappointed_ is not a strong enough word to describe how Rey is feeling. The animal from the shower is back, but it’s a different kind of animal; this one wants to taste blood.

Ben stands at the top of the steps, his body struck in stark shadows from the orange lights that shine through the windows. He sighs, runs a hand through his hair, and stares across the room at Rey. His shoulders sag. 

“We need to leave,” he says. “Can you please bring me my glasses? I’ll drive.”

Her fervor dies like a candle blown out; her animal put to sleep. It feels terrible, giving up when she wants to fight, and if it was just her, things could be different. But she has Ben now, and while she is just fine being reckless on her own it will not fly with him as part of the equation. So she gives in and does what he asks her to. She lets the blanket fall to the ground before seeking out Ben’s glasses, finally finding them on the shelf above the bed. She picks Archie up off the ground on her way out, and finds Ben already in the driver’s seat, warming up the engine. He takes his glasses with a whispered, “thank you,” then stands up when he has a look at her.

“Come on, sweetheart, let’s get you dressed.” He walks her back to the bathroom, where her clothes are still waiting for her on the closed toilet. Exhausted, she allows him to dress her, setting Archie on the sink and switching her knife from one hand to the other while he feeds her arms through each of her sleeves. Once she’s dressed he hands Archie back and leads her to the front, where he buckles her into the passenger seat. She curls up in the seat, metal blade cold against her thigh, and watches Ben as he maneuvers the vehicle through the parking lot, out onto the road, and eventually onto the highway, heading back east.

“We’ll spend the night in the same rest area we were at last night, okay?” Rey doesn’t answer, but that seems just fine with Ben. It’s quite late, closing in on 2am, so there isn’t too much traffic. Just them and the semis. Rey has been drifting since the run-in with the security guard and she’s floating now, maybe she’ll fall asleep soon, but then Ben’s voice cuts the silence and brings her back to the present.

“I know what you need, Rey,” he says. She looks over at him, and he is staring straight ahead, gazing out of the window, his face briefly brightened by the headlights of an oncoming car. His Adam’s apple bobs. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel.

“Do you?”

He glances over at her. She can’t see his eyes behind the reflection in his glasses, but she can imagine them, wide and dark and full of life. Her heart leaps. This is what it feels like to be known. She grasps at the feeling and holds it tight. 

“I do,” he says. “And I’m going to help you get it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: Ben fucks Rey, consensually, while she is unconscious, including vaginal and anal sex. He discovers scars, and covers the scars with bite marks and hickeys. There is also come marking. Rey has an anxiety attack. Some of Rey's scars were caused by self-harm, which is described.**
> 
> I thank flypaper_brain in the notes of every chapter but she was particularly helpful with getting inside Ben's head in this one. So if you like Ben's section please leave a little bit of love for her!
> 
> ALSO PumpkinHallow4814 asked in a comment if our story takes any inspiration from [the Scissor Sisters song "I Can't Decide"](https://youtu.be/buYrBbwyCGE) and it does not (I hadn't heard that song before seeing the comment) but now I can't stop listening to it so I guess it's now the official song of The Ride.
> 
> You may have noticed that the chapter count has gone up by one. Originally this chapter was going to open with Rey's pov and we would find out about what Ben did during their conversation, but when I started writing Rey she went in an emotional direction I didn't expect and it became clear that we'd need Ben first, which doubled the size of the chapter. So there will be one more chapter of the main story, and then an epilogue set about six months later.
> 
> I'm already looking forward. I have a few writing events that I'll be participating in September and October, but I'll also be returning to a couple of multichapter fics that have been on hiatus since the spring. So if you've been enjoying this fic I hope you'll consider checking out some of my other fics!


	10. The Kill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously on _The Ride_ :  
> Ben drugged Rey at her suggestion and had sex with her  
> She woke up and they talked about things
> 
> This chapter contains some graphic descriptions of violence, starting with "Rey's movement...". You can pick up again at "Ben leaps..." although if you want to skip all blood mentions you'll need to skip ahead to "They shower..."
> 
> More detailed content warnings in the endnotes.

As he drives them to the rest area, with Rey curled up in the passenger seat with both her knife and her plush arch gripped in her arms, Ben thinks about everything that just happened, and how suddenly things can change. She’d been so warm, and so sweet, and she’d let him take care of her, and he’d liked it. He thinks he liked it. It made him feel something, something unfamiliar and bone-achingingly pleasant, something he’s still feeling and that he wants to feel even more of, but still doesn’t want to examine too closely. Yet. 

It takes almost an hour to reach the rest area, and by then Rey is asleep. He carries her to the bedroom and tucks her into bed with her clothes on; he leaves the plush arch in her arms, but slips her knife out of her hand and slides it under her pillow. She wakes briefly and gives him a smile, and he considers asking if he can sleep in the bed with her, but he can’t work up the courage to ask and since she doesn’t offer he decides to spend the night on the bunk outside her bedroom door. 

Before he goes to sleep he takes a gamble and moves the body from the sofa to the storage area underneath the Winnebago. He’d parked on the very edge of the lot and there’s very little traffic so early in the morning, and it’s worth it to him to get it out of their space. He’s a bit surprised to find the compartment full of stuff, suitcases and bits of furniture and cardboard boxes sealed with clear tape. There’s also an impressive-looking spare tire. He wonders again what was up with the people who’d owned the RV, and if Rey had ever even looked under there. It doesn’t really matter; he shifts some of the boxes to make a little tunnel into which the wrapped body fits perfectly. It’s hot down there, and it will start to smell very soon, but Ben is working on a plan to get rid of it before it becomes a serious problem.

Rey is uncharacteristically quiet when she wakes up in the early afternoon, almost pensive. Ben offers to drive them back into the city, where they can get real food and maybe do more sightseeing, but Rey declines. He tries to talk to her, asks how she’s feeling, if her bruises are still sore, but she’s not inclined to reply. It concerns him a little, but he can respect the fact that she clearly needs space. So they spend the day mostly in silence, eating food from the vending machines and just hanging out. After spending some time with a 2012 Rand McNally Road Atlas he found under the passenger seat, Ben gets the stack of paperbacks out of the cabinet and lounges on the bunk - he can’t bring himself to sit on the sofa - reading something which the cover informs him has been specially selected for Oprah’s book club. 

Rey prowls as he reads. She spends some time in the bedroom, then skulks out, arms crossed, Mark I trench knife clutched tightly in her hand. She stalks to the front and sits in the passenger seat, and soon the sound of the whetstone against metal drifts back to Ben. The day is grey and a little rainy, and there’s nothing to see except the parking lot and the cars zooming past on the interstate. Ben’s pretty sure she isn’t really watching anyway. He thinks he knows what she’s thinking about, and the thought of it excites him, but he finds her anxiousness worrisome. She walks back and forth several times over the course of an hour before Ben stops her. 

“Do you want me to read to you?” He asks, and she gawks at him like he’s just grown a second head. 

“Read to me. Like I’m a kid or something?”

He sets the open book face down on his chest and lowers his glasses from where they’ve been resting on top of his head onto his nose, so he can see her better. She’s a mess, her hair in those sloppy buns and wearing a pair of scruffy shorts and his poor cashmere sweater, thoroughly grubby from being slept in over two nights. He doesn’t mind that at all, though.

“Just for something to do.”

She glances at the spine of his book and shudders. “Pretty sure I’ve read those books and I don’t want to read them again.”

“How about a movie?”

She doesn’t say yes but she goes back to the front and sets up a DVD. It’s ‘The Princess Bride’ again.

“Can we watch something else?” He calls from the bunk. “We watched that one already.”

“It’s my favorite!” She calls back, starting up the movie. “Deal with it.”

Rey apparently doesn’t have an issue sitting on the sofa; it turns Ben’s stomach but it’s not like she’s going to move if he tells her to. It ends up not being so bad, because from the bunk he has a nice view of her all sprawled out on the sofa, and he indulges in watching her over the edge of the book. She spreads out, limbs loose, and follows the movie, reciting some of the lines like she did when they were driving the other night. Once Buttercup and Westley make it to the Fire Swamp she loses interest, and goes back to sharpening her knife. Her legs are spread wide, her right foot on the floor and her left one up on the sofa, knee bent back. She holds the knife out between her legs like it’s her cock, and runs the whetstone along the edge from where the blade meets the handle all the way to the tip in long, steady strokes. She doesn’t look at Ben, but there’s something about the way she’s holding herself that makes him believe that she is aware he’s watching her. He forgets about the movie and the book and can only think about how she’ll look wielding the blade, and after a while he has to excuse himself to go to the bathroom. When he comes back out she’s put the knife down and is watching the movie again, a satisfied smile on her face. Ben sets the book aside, lays his glasses on the sill of the window, and pretends to nap until he falls asleep.

When he wakes up the movie is over and the sun has just started to set, filling the RV with a dim, orange light. Rey has just returned from another visit to the vending machine. She lays out her purchases on the little table while he sits up and rubs his eyes.

“Two Snickers, one regular Doritos and one Cool Ranch, some of these gummy things you don’t like, two bottles of Coke, and a Honey Bun - the last one, so thank me.”

“Thanks,” he says, getting up and sliding into the booth across from her. “We need to talk about what we’re doing tonight.”

Rey swallows her mouthful of candy bar and washes it down with a mouthful of Coke. “It’s all I’ve been thinking about all day. I’m ready to go.”

“We need a plan,” he says, pulling open one of the packets of chips, and she rolls her eyes at him. 

“You and your plans. Planning didn’t do you a lot of good, did it?”

He can’t help but prickle at her question. “They didn’t find my bodies, did they? That’s not how I got caught. They’ve already found _eight_ of yours, at least. And if you did the others the same way they’ve been found, too; they just haven’t been connected to the others. You can get away with pretty much anything if you make a body impossible to find or identify, but the key is that you need to have a fucking plan for how to accomplish that. Okay?”

Rey sucks her teeth and grabs a chip out of his bag. “Okay. You want a plan for getting rid of the body?”

“The bodies. Yeah.”

Rey shifts up and tucks her right foot under her butt, and reaches for the bag of gummy worms. _Sour gummies_ , the label declares. Ben shudders and wishes he had some sliced peaches but he eats another Dorito.

“Bodies,” Rey murmurs, then shoves a red worm into her mouth. “Bodies,” she says again, around it. “Do you have a plan then?”

“I took a look at the atlas earlier. There’s a national forest just south of here, and there’s a little lake in there. We’ll have to scope it out, but even if we aren’t able to dump them properly there should be some place to leave them where they won’t be found, at least for a while.”

She nods and shoves another worm into her mouth. “Then what?” She asks, not looking at him.

He wants to snark back at her, wants to say _oh, **now** you want a plan? _But he holds his tongue. She’s nervous, agitated, and he wants to help her feel better. He wants to make her feel good.

“Arkansas,” he says, and then she does look at him, stares quizzically across the table. 

“Arkansas? I haven’t been there.”

“Me neither.”

“Why Arkansas?”

“My graduate advisor retired down there a few years ago. Has a house out in the middle of the forest. No neighbors for miles around.”

Rey swallows the worm and doesn’t reach for another one. The tension around her is palpable; Ben can almost taste it rolling off of her. It’s sweet and sharp and it makes his mouth water. 

“Do you trust him… to help you?”

Ben laughs at the thought, chokes on the chips in his mouth and soothes his coughing with the last of his Coke. “Oh god, no. He’s a terrible man, he made my life hell.”

Rey sits up straighter, and her expression sharpens. “Oh?”

He’s never said any of this out loud before, but now it’s like he can’t stop himself. His face is hot and his heart rate spikes and the words shoot out of his mouth like cannonballs. “He controlled everything about my research. It started out slowly, I’d choose my classes and then he’d make me change them, I’d write up papers and proposals for him and he’d make me rewrite them, then make me rewrite them again so they were more like they were the first time. I didn’t realize it at the time but he was testing the waters, trying to see how much I would put up with.”

“Yeah,” Rey said, twisting her mouth like she was tasting something bitter.

“He asked me to be his teaching assistant for his undergraduate class, and I ended up doing all the teaching too but he insisted it wasn’t any good, even though he kept asking me to do things. And I just kept saying yes, you know? I didn’t know what else to do, and he gradually became my life. I lived in his house, he didn’t charge me rent which I thought was a great deal but then I ended up doing housework, too. He treated me like shit and I didn’t even realize it. It got so bad my parents were worried, Dad even came up to New Haven to check on me and I got into a fight with him. Punched him in the driveway and knocked him out.”

“Shit.” Rey was leaning forward, gummy worms forgotten.

“Worst thing I’ve ever done.” He pauses. “Well, one of the worst things. The thing I feel worst about, anyway.”

“What did your advisor do? What did he say?”

“He told me I did the right thing, that my parents just wanted to derail my studies. So my dad went back to Boston, and I stayed and finished my PhD.”

Rey leans back, but her expression doesn’t waver. “What happened next?”

“I got the tenure-track job at Virginia, thanks to Snoke—”

“That’s his name?” Rey asked, interrupting. “Snoke?”

“Alasdair Snoke, Professor Emeritus of History of Science at Yale University.”

She wrinkles her nose in distaste. “What a dick.”

“I don’t disagree.” He shakes the Dorito crumbs from the bag directly into his mouth - not something he would have dreamed of doing a week ago, now it barely registers - and reaches for the Honey Bun. 

“What about your Dad? Did you see him again?” Ben glances up to look at her, but she’s staring at her gummy worms.

“Yeah. And my mom. They came to visit me a couple of times. But they were, you know…”

“Disappointed?”

“Yeah.” He rips open the Honey Bun and takes a bite. 

Rey pulls out a green worm and pushes it between her lips, somewhat less emphatically than before.

“What about you, Rey?” Ben asks. He hopes he sounds casual. He’s sure he doesn’t. She stares at him straight in the eyes.

“I ain’t talkin’ bout my family.”

He can’t say he expected her to say anything else, and isn’t surprised when Rey immediately slides out of the booth and disappears into the bedroom for a while. He is slightly surprised when she gathers up the trash and throws it into the little bin behind the driver’s seat before doing so. When she comes out twenty minutes later she’s wearing her yellow sundress and a kelly green cardigan, buttoned all the way up to cover the bruises on her arms and her collarbone; she’s used some kind of make-up to cover up the ones on her neck. The makeup is a bit light for her skin, but Ben figures that in the dark you wouldn't be able to tell. She’s taken her hair down, and it falls in waves around her shoulders. His fingers itch to touch it, run his hands through it, but he doesn’t. She’s wearing her boots, and a warmth twists low in Ben’s belly when he sees them.

“Ready to go?” He asks as she walks past him into the open space at the top of the stairs. “Want me to drive?”

“I’ll drive,” she says, slipping behind the driver’s seat and starting up the engine. “There’s a rest area down on forty-four, that’s the direction we’re going in anyway, and I don’t think it’ll be as busy as the ones on sixty-four or seventy.” Ben settles in the passenger seat and watches her ready the Winnebago for the next leg of their journey, and then they’re off. 

With traffic it takes them almost two hours to reach the rest area, by then it’s well past 9pm and it’s just them and the trucks. Rey parks the Winnebago at the very end of the row and lowers the stabilizer, but keeps the sides folded in. They take turns going inside to use the restrooms. Ben goes first, and when he comes back he stops Rey on her way out the door. He knows that when she comes back, she won’t be coming back alone. 

“Be careful,” he says, and although she rolls her eyes, she also smiles at him sweetly.

“I’ll be fine,” she replies. “I’ve done this before.”

“I know. I’ve seen your work.”

A flush rises on her cheeks. “You like my work, don’t you.” Her eyes flit across his face. “You’re nervous.”

“I’m excited. To see it.” He swallows, and she lifts her left hand and strokes her thumb across his throat. She’s touching the scar she gave him, just a slight line now, barely red the last time he looked at it in the mirror. But he would always know it was there..

“I’m excited, too,” she says softly. She reaches forward slowly with her right hand, taking his hand in hers and bringing it to her chest, using it to cup her left breast - her breast, covered in his marks. She inhales quickly but doesn’t say anything, looks up into his eyes. She’s not wearing a bra and he can feel her nipple hardening under his palm. He considers kissing her; he could kiss her, right now. What would happen if he kissed her? But he doesn’t, and she doesn’t. She lowers their hands and steps towards the door. “You can look out the window but keep the lights out and stay hidden. Trust me. Okay?”

“Okay.”

With the walls folded in the space is tight, but Ben is able to squeeze back into the bottom bunk, where he can peek out through the window towards the rest area building across the parking lot. Rey comes out of the building and wanders, around the other side to where the vending machines are, and then back to the covered picnic tables on his side of the building. Ben wonders what she’s thinking about. Is she thinking about what she’s going to do later? Is she thinking about him? Minutes pass, and a few cars come and go - a woman with two small children, an older couple, a van full of tired teenagers - but nothing like what he knows she’s looking for. At one point after about 45 minutes a state trooper enters the parking lot, and Rey casually makes her way back to the RV. She comes inside and waits by the door.

“Are you okay?” Ben calls quietly across the space.

“Fine,” she answers shortly. “Just not keen on killing a cop trying to arrest me for solicitation.”

“I don’t know, that sounds pretty hot to me.”

Rey snorts with laughter, and then she’s quiet, and Ben’s heart feels light. He’s happy, and excited, and Rey was careful and that makes him even happier.

The trooper leaves about fifteen minutes later and she goes back out, and just in time. Within seconds of her making herself comfortable at the picnic tables again, a white SUV pulls up and a middle-aged man steps out. He’s white, heavyset, wearing khaki colored cargo shorts and a dark shirt with a collar. Rey gives him a wave and he looks up from his phone to nod at her, and when he comes back out a few minutes later he pauses in the glow of the lamp posts before putting his hands in his pockets and wandering over to where Rey sits in the shadow of the roof that covers the picnic tables. Ben holds his breath, and his heart beats wildly in his ears. They talk for a few minutes and Rey looks relaxed; at one point she leans her elbows back on the table and laughs, spreads her knees and opens her body, and Ben can’t see the man’s face but he can imagine his lecherous glances. Maybe he’s even saying things to her, things he’d like to do to her. Ben thrills with the knowledge that Rey is leading him on, that he’s not going to get anything from her except a knife in the gut. And Ben, _he’s_ the lucky one, because he’ll get to watch it happen. His body is hot and his cock is hard; he has to reach down and undo his zipper so it doesn’t get too uncomfortable. He considers pulling it out and giving it a squeeze but decides against it; it’ll be better to wait and see what will happen. 

About ten minutes after they start talking, Rey stands up and starts walking towards the Winnebago, not even glancing behind her. After a few seconds, the man looks around and then follows her. 

She opens the door and Ben is surprised to hear her call out, “Benny? You can come out, baby.” Her voice sounds strange, high-pitched, and her accent sounds stronger than it usually does. He unfolds himself from out of the bunk and stands up in the narrow space between the bunks and the bathroom.

“Hey,” he says, pitching his own voice deeper than normal. He watches as Rey trips up the steps, giggling, and the man comes up behind her. She collapses on the sofa and giggles again, leaning over sideways, and it occurs to Ben that she’s pretending to be drunk, or maybe high. The man looks down at her and then over at Ben, crosses his arms and squares his shoulders. 

“She says you like to watch,” he says, the corner of his mouth turned up. Ben’s stomach churns and he thinks he might vomit; watching Rey fuck someone else is the absolute last thing he wants. But he does his best to smile back, and nods.

“Sometimes,” he says. “When I’m in the right mood.”

Rey suddenly stands up, forcing the man to take a step back towards the front of the RV. She wobbles slightly, as though gaining balance, and then pulls the dress and sweater off together over her head in one smooth move, leaving her standing there wearing nothing but panties and her cowboy boots. She shouts, an excited _whoop!_ , and the clothing lands on the table. She looks over at Ben, a goofy grin lighting up her face as she kicks off her left boot, followed by the right.

“Are you ready to watch, baby?” She says breathlessly. “This is gonna be fun.” 

The man starts to laugh. He doesn’t even seem to notice that Rey is covered with bruises, doesn’t stop to think that she might be in pain or being forced to do something against her will. Ben hates him with a white hot loathing he’s never experienced before. He wonders if he feels anything close to what she is feeling right now.

“Yeah,” the man says instead, speaking to Ben, leaning forward and rubbing his hands together. His voice drips with disdain. “Are you ready to watch? I’m gonna fuck your girl, better than you can, make her scream—”

Rey’s movement is sudden and brutal. 

Ben knows Rey is quick; he’d witnessed her speed their first night together, when he’d been crawling across the floor, syringe in hand, and she’d had the knife against his throat before he’d even realized she was awake. But now, standing back as a witness rather than a participant, he is in a much better position to appreciate it. 

Before the man can finish whatever it was he was going to say Rey draws the knife from her boot and stands up, releasing a furious, bloodthirsty snarl as she moves. Ben loves that sound; he knows it’s for him, and it riles him up almost to the point of pain. The blade meets the man’s belly, the velocity of her movement coupled with her rage propels her arm up and Ben can hear the ragged squelching of metal sliding through flesh; the man’s arms belatedly wrap around his front, and the first drops of blood hit the ground before he can make a sound. His attempted scream, however, is cut off when Rey rapidly extracts the knife from his torso and draws the blade across his throat. His gurgling breath is accompanied by rhythmic spurts of blood that catch the walls, the floor, the sofa, and Rey herself in their crimson streams. 

Rey is still until the man opens his mouth again. His eyes are wide with shock, as though he hasn’t yet put together what exactly is happening to him. The only sound that escapes is another gurgle, but it’s enough to push Rey into another frenzy. She cocks her arm and punches him, the points on the knuckles of her knife crunching wetly when they make contact with his nose. She pulls back and hits him again. Ben is amazed that he’s still standing; more blood and a grey shine that Ben suspects is the man’s entrails peek through the space between his arms. After the third blow to his face - which Ben thinks resembles a pounded steak, almost ready for frying, more than eyes, nose, and a mouth - the man’s body finally gets the memo and he falls backwards into an awkward pile on the floor, barely missing the little armchair that sits behind the passenger seat.

Apart from her initial snarl, Rey hasn’t made a sound, not a cry or a shout or a word said; the only noise Ben can hear is her movement and heavy breathing, and the sound of his own heartbeat. The man’s collapse seems only to enrage her further. She drops to her knees next to him and proceeds to bring the blade down into his body, again and again and again. Ben is hypnotized by the sight of her, crouched on the ground wearing only a pair of cotton panties and an ever-growing smattering of blood. He watches the muscles in her shoulders and back work as she turns the man into a pile of meat. He thinks it might be the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and he wants her to know how he feels. He wants her to feel it, too.

Ben leaps across the room and pulls Rey away from her handiwork. She’s only barely started to slow, and she growls at first, twists in his arms, readies the knife to strike again, but when she looks up into his face her expression, which had been twisted into a snarl, softens instantly.

“Ben,” she says.

Ben stands up, lifting her, and then tosses her onto the sofa. She lands with a grunt, and the knife slips out from around her fingers and clatters onto the floor. He follows her onto the sofa immediately, tugging his shirt off, and she’s already pulling down her panties, flings them away as he looms over her, caging her in with his hands over her shoulders, her legs spread wide by his knees. Her right arm is covered with a thick smear of red, and the rest of her body is speckled with it. She reminds him of a painting by Jackson Pollock, all in shades of crimson and rose. There’s a drop of it just under her left eye - her eye, which stares up at him, wide and shining. He leans down and draws the flat of his tongue across her cheek, catching the droplet and a few others in its wake. She shudders at the contact, and says his name again. “ _Ben_.” It sounds like she’s pleading with him; like she needs something from him.

Ben shifts his weight to his left arm and reaches for his belt with his right hand. Rey grunts and pushes his hand out of the way, taking control. In a moment his jeans and boxers are down to his thighs, and Rey’s red hand is wrapped around his cock, pulling him closer. 

“Ben,” she says a third time, and looks up into his face. “Ben, _please_.”

There are tears in her eyes and she’s asked him so nicely and he’s not about to tell her no. She lines his cock up and he pushes in, all the way to the hilt.

He can’t breathe; she’s so warm and soft and wet and _good_. He’s never felt anything like this before and can’t figure out how to make himself move, it’s all too sudden, and too much. Fortunately Rey doesn’t have the same problem; she seems to know exactly what she needs. She growls, wraps one arm around his neck and another around his back, then uses his body as leverage to fuck herself on him. It turns out Ben doesn’t have to move at all. Rey, so alive and wanting, is fully capable of using him to give herself what she needs. But unlike either of the times they fucked before, they are both fully participating in this. He’s not tied up and she’s not unconscious; he’s holding himself still so she can ride him from beneath. She slips and slides over his cock and against his torso, sweat and blood running slick between them. She moans and gasps and digs her fingernails into his back as she works, and he’s a little bit out of his mind but he thinks she says his name, too. It feels like no time at all before she cries out and clenches around him, and this is enough to unfreeze him. He thrusts into her trembling cunt, again and again, as she holds him tight and cries his name.

As soon as he thinks Rey has worked through her orgasm he pulls out and lets himself go. He grunts as he comes, his spend spurting out to form a puddle around her belly button. She’s breathing heavily, and she gazes up into his face.

“Ben,” she says, for what feels like the thousandth time. She could say his name forever and he’d never tire of it. He slaps his hand into the cum and pushes it up towards her chest. The pearlescent fluid mixes with the blood and makes a pink smear up her stomach.

“Mine,” he growls, pressing the stuff into her with his fingers so hard that both his fingertips and her skin turn white. “Mine.”

“Ben,” she says, a plea, and grips his hair in her fists. “Kiss me.”

He lowers his lips to meet hers, and it’s so much better than it was when she was unconscious. She’d been sweet, but when she offers her mouth to him she’s even sweeter. Her lips, slack in unconsciousness, are soft and strong now. They open when he presses his lips against hers, and her mouth opens and encourages his to open, too. She meets him, overtakes him, overwhelms him, with lips and teeth and tongue. The sensation is strange, and it would be unpleasant with anyone other than Rey. He doesn’t know what he’s doing but it doesn’t matter. She’s his, and she’s pleased with him. 

“You’re amazing,” he murmurs against her lips.

“Shut up,” she says, and pulls him back down to overwhelm him some more. While they kiss he continues to rub against her skin, even though the cum and blood has thinned out and is in the process of drying into a tacky mess. It’s only a few minutes before Ben realizes that he’s hard again, and that Rey has found his cock and is rutting against it. He pulls his hips away and angles down, and then he’s in her again. He sits back on his knees and grips her thighs up near her hips, holds her still so she can’t move, and looks down between them as he pulls out slowly, and then presses back in again. 

“Ben,” she mewls, her hands gripping the arm of the sofa over her head, and she tries to wiggle but he holds her more tightly.

“I want to see,” he says, and then she looks too, and they watch together as his cock slides out of her and then back in, slowly, getting wetter with each stroke. She likes it, he can tell, her wetness gives her away, and the noises she makes, how she twists her body. Soon enough she’s asking, begging him to give her more, so he does. He leans forward and fucks her hard - holds her tight and snaps his hips, giving her everything he can, fucking her like he would if she were dead. 

No, not like he would if she were dead; if she was dead he’d simply use her body for his own pleasure, but that’s not what he wants now. He wants to make her come, preferably before he does. So he holds his own orgasm back, experimenting as he thrusts into her, trying to remember which angles had made her muscles respond the most when he fucked her unconscious body, and taking note of the ones which are making her groan the most now. He touches her breasts, tweaks her nipples, nuzzles her neck, tries everything he can think of to figure out what she likes. Luckily for him she’s loud and responsive, so by the time she wriggles her right hand between them and grinds her fingers against her clit he knows she’s close to coming. He just needs to hold out, just a little bit longer.

“Come with me, Ben” she groans, her mouth close to his ear where he nuzzles into her neck. “Mark me inside.” He can’t hold out any longer, and explodes inside her just as she shouts her own orgasm, her muscles embracing him from deep within. 

Ben isn’t sure how long it takes him to fully come down from that high, but when he does Rey is holding him to her with both her arms and legs, and his cock has softened and slipped out of her. His first thought is to wonder when he can be inside her again, but that thought is followed almost immediately by the realization that they’re lying on a blood-spattered sofa and there’s a very dead body spread out next to them all over the floor. Ben groans and wiggles in Rey’s hold.

“We need to get up, sweetheart.”

“I don’t want to,” she says, but she lets him go so he can sit up again. She looks sweet, her hair a mess, eyes hooded, a satisfied smile on her face, and her body covered with smears and spots of blood and cum. Cum leaks out of her cunt, too, and Ben scoops it up and adds it to the mess on her stomach. She laughs at that and pushes out more, and he takes it all and rubs it over her chest, up to her neck.

“You’re markin’ me, aren’t you.”

“I am,” he says. “You’re mine.”

She hums. “Does that mean you’re mine?”

“If you want.” He’s avoiding her eyes, looking at her bruises instead, as he carefully rubs their cum into them, but she grabs his hair again and pulls him in for a kiss. She sucks his bottom lip into her mouth and bites it hard enough to hurt. 

“I want,” she says, then kisses him once more, more gently, as though soothing away the sting. “I want.”

“Good,” he says, hoping his ears aren’t as red as they feel. “But we still need to get out of here.”

She looks around and chuckles. “What a fucking mess. Shower first?”

“Body first.”

She looks past his shoulder at the pile of gore and blood spread across the floor and makes a face. “We’re taking his car, right? Can’t we just burn it all?”

“No,” he says, standing up and pulling his jeans back up over his hips. “We need to leave the two bodies in different places and the Winnebago somewhere else entirely. We don’t want to make it easy to connect them.”

“That makes sense,” Rey groans, sitting up and running her fingers over her ribs. “Do we have enough plastic?”

It turns out they have just enough plastic. Rey helps Ben transfer the man onto the plastic sheet, roll him up, and then wrap the whole thing with duct tape. It’s a messy job, but Ben knows it’s worth it. He’s finally found something worth protecting, and he’s not going to take chances by being sloppy. 

Their messy work done, they shower together, and Ben can’t get enough of Rey. He lathers his hands with shower gel and washes all of her, from the tops of her feet and her ankles all the way up to her neck, taking care to rinse away all the blood and cum and makeup, uncovering his marks, which have already started fading to a deep green. He wishes they had more time, time to stop and kiss each bruise, but they don’t. He promises himself he’ll do it later. The water stings Ben’s back, and when he asks Rey why that might be she laughs and traces her finger over scratches that she gave him while they were fucking. This information only makes the shower more difficult, because all Ben wants to do is push her against the slick wall and fuck her under the spray, give her more bruises to kiss away, but he knows there’s not enough time now, and he can be patient. She’s less patient and doesn’t make it any easier for him, but he perseveres and soon enough they’re clean.

They dress in the bedroom, and then Rey pulls Ben’s duffle bag out from under the bed and stuffs her own clothes in. 

“You don’t have many clothes.”

Rey looks up from where she’s digging into the hamper and gives him a crooked smile. “You don’t have _any_ clothes.”

“We’ll get more,” he promises, “once we get settled.”

“Yeah, you still haven’t told me what exactly your plan is. Arkansas, right?”

“Right.” Ben shoves the last of her clothes in the bag and holds his hand out for the plush arch, which is resting on the floor next to her foot. “Do you want to put that in here?”

“No, I’m gonna carry it.” She picks it up and presses her lips against the red felt of its heart, and gives him a little smile. “It’s like having you with me when you’re not with me.”

Ben has no idea what to say to that, so he just clears his throat and says, “Yes, Arkansas. I want to kill Snoke and take his house.”

“Do you want me to kill him?” She’s excited, she’s offering, and the thought of Rey slicing Snoke up like she did to the man earlier is a compelling one, but Ben shakes his head.

“I want to do it myself. I’ll find a way.”

“And his house? How exactly do you take a man’s house?” She stands up and reaches for the shelves behind him.

“You just need the right paperwork. I think the guy who created Kylo Ren for me can help. He can probably help with the cash, too, now that I’m thinking about it.”

“You trust this guy?”

“I don’t know about that, but he has his own legal issues and he’s an old friend of my dad’s. I don’t think he’d snitch if I contacted him about it, though.” Ben knows for a fact that his “uncle” wouldn’t snitch, and he’s relieved when Rey doesn’t ask for more details. 

Rey crouches back down in front of him and holds out her hand. 

“Here. You can have this.” 

Ben’s hand trembles as he lifts the shining silver syringe case off her fingers and clutches it to his chest. “Rey. Are you sure?”

“I trust you, Ben.” She runs her thumb across his throat, then leans forward and kisses him gently on the mouth. “Come on, let’s go before we run out of hours.”

They drive. Ben takes the SUV, along with the duffle bag, and Rey takes the Winnebago. They drive south, Ben leading the way, eventually exiting the interstate and going into the forest. They dump the bodies - in two different places, as Ben insists - and then they drive fifty miles further south before they pull off the interstate again and leave the Winnebago in flames behind what appears to be a long-deserted strip mall.

Rey is exhausted, and she falls asleep curled in the passenger seat of the SUV. Ben is too keyed up to sleep, and they need to get far away in any case, so he drives until they reach the next rest area, then uses Rey’s trick and passes it, takes the next exit and heads north again, and parks in the northbound rest area. He opens all the windows and takes the time to fold down the rear seats and drags Rey back with him; they sleep curled around each other until light and noise and heat awakens them around seven the next morning. 

“I still can’t quite believe you’re touching me,” Rey murmurs, her voice heavy with sleep. Ben chuckles against her neck, where his lips have been since well before she awoke. He pulls her closer, her back firm against his chest. 

“I’m going to touch you forever.”

“Forever.” She snorts, but she presses herself back against him. “Forever is a long time, Ben Solo.”

“That’s what I’ve heard, but I’m curious to see if that’s true.”

They’re silent for a few minutes, just holding each other as the sounds of passing cars and the slams of car doors float in through the windows. 

“Do you really think you could put up with me forever?” Her voice is so soft and vulnerable, and Ben lets her go and rolls her over to face him. She looks at his chest, and then at his neck, but he doesn’t say anything until she looks into his face. 

“I do. Do you think you can put up with me?”

She hums. “If I can’t, I suppose we both know what’ll happen to you.” It’s an implicit threat, but it doesn’t bother Ben. He kisses her nose. 

“I’d be okay with that.” He really would.

A car full of children parks next to them, and they take that as a sign it’s time to leave. They drive south again, towards breakfast, and the Ozarks, and to whatever life has in store for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: Rey lures a man into the RV, murders him violently, Rey and Ben have sex and there is blood. The bodies are dumped and the RV is lit on fire, although this is not described in detail. Potential future murders are mentioned.**
> 
> Thanks as always and especially to flypaper_brain, who makes this story and everything I write at least 100% better. (She's also an amazing person)
> 
> If you are enjoying this story, and I hope you are, allow me to direct you to a story that just started posting today, [How to Be a Heartbreaker by LittleLostStar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26557009/chapters/64739350#workskin). Rey is a trophy wife with much more to her than meets the eye, and it's hard to tell how much Ben has or hasn't figured out about her. The fic will update on Saturday and I can't wait for the next chapter!
> 
> One more chapter! This is it for the main story, the final chapter will be an Epilogue that takes place six months later, and will briefly cover the events between the end of chapter ten and Epilogue time. EDIT: The Epilogue will post on OCTOBER 4th (I have oneshots I have to finish this week and I don't want to half-ass the epilogue, sorry to make you wait!)


	11. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings in the endnotes, although there's nothing here that hasn't already been covered in previous chapters (I have added two tags: Cockwarming and Pegging). Also I don't think it needs to be mentioned but just in case (because there are animals in this chapter) - no animal harm!

It’s close to 2am when they park the SUV a few yards up the long driveway to Professor Snoke’s house, just far enough that it won’t be visible from the road. Not that it matters; Ben wasn’t kidding when he said Snoke lived out in the middle of nowhere. The town they drove through on their way here is a good five miles back, and they haven’t passed another mailbox for probably another two. Ben takes his syringe, already loaded up with fentanyl plus another vial in his pocket, just in case. He snaps on a pair of nitrile gloves and balances the goggles on his forehead. He assures Rey again that Snoke is old and weak and won’t fight back, and Rey believes him. They talk through the plan one last time, share an intense kiss, and then start their trek up the gravel drive.

They walk quickly at first, but Rey grabs Ben’s elbow and encourages him to slow down when she senses the tunnel of trees opening to the sky, the widening of the drive, and the house looming ahead. It’s not a large house, she can see that even in the darkness, it’s a single-story thing that appears to have a garage or maybe a workshop connected to it by a breezeway - but still, in her mind, it looms. Her future is in that house, and although they have a good plan she is calm and steady, prepared for anything that might go wrong; prepared to use her knife if she has to. She doesn’t want to. She knows how good it feels to make a kill, and this is one that Ben has earned. But if it comes down to her and Snoke, or Ben and Snoke, she won’t hesitate.

Their plan gets shot out of the water within a few yards of the front door. They had intended to sneak in, Rey has her lockpicking kit in a pack slung around her middle; she’d open the door, Ben would find Snoke and stick the needle in him - maybe even wake the old man up so he could understand just what was going to happen to him first - but when a dog started barking inside the house it was clear their plan wasn’t going to work.

“He has a _dog?_ ” Ben whispers incredulously, turning to Rey with his eyebrows high in surprise. “I can’t imagine that man with a pet.”

“Not a pet,” she clarifies. “Guard dog. Protection. Probably a mean old thing. Quick, go in there,” she gestures ahead of them, to the breezeway, just as a light turns on inside the house. As soon as he steps forward lights on the front of the house switch on, bathing the parking area in bright white. Rey pushes Ben and he scurries across the gravel and into the shadow of the breezeway, just as the front door opens and a dog slips out, followed very closely by a man. Rey doesn’t have time to hide, or anywhere to go, or any need to. So she stands where she is, waiting.

He’s about what she expected, given what Ben told her; tall, and thin, and very old. The lights are blinding so she can’t see much more than that, but she can tell that he shuffles out the door with the support of a walker, and there’s something that she guesses is a shotgun in a leather holster strapped to the front of the thing.

The dog reaches her in seconds, crouches, and growls at her, lips curled back to display sharp teeth. It’s a full-grown Irish Setter and she’s pretty sure it’s a purebred, although it’s gaunt and its copper-colored fur looks thin and wiry to her eyes. “Hey, puppy,” she coos, ignoring its growling, crouching down and reaching out to it. “Hey, puppy. Are you a good pup?” 

The dog stops growling and looks confused, until the man up on the porch yells something - the dog’s name, Rey guesses, but she can’t make it out. Something harsh and having only a single syllable; something that sounds like it was made to be shouted. The dog whines and backs away from her, and she stands up again and returns her attention to the old man. He’s made his way to the top of the three wooden steps that lead from the porch down to the gravel, and he’s pulled the shotgun out of the holster and pointed it right at her.

“Hey, mister,” she says, playing up her Texas twang. “I’m lost and I was wondering if I could use your phone?” 

“How do you get lost here?” He sounds sceptical. “There’s nothing for miles around. Where did you come from?”

“Me and my boyfriend had a fight and he left me out on the road,” she says, injecting a touch of anger into her voice. “Told me if I was gonna be such a bitch I could damn well make my own way home.”

Snoke laughs at that, throws back his head and laughs, an ugly, bitter thing, and Rey’s fingers itch to reach for her knife. But she can see Ben, peeking around the corner from the breezeway, the metal of the syringe shining in his hand. He’s pulled the goggles down over his eyes, and seeing Ben ready to go calms her down a bit.

“Please, mister,” she pleads, taking a step closer. “I’ll call my girlfriend and she’ll come get me and then I’ll be out of your hair, I promise.”

“And what do I get,” he asks, gun aimed steadily at her, “for being so kind as to let you use my telephone?”

Rey’s gut churns and she opens her mouth, unsure of what exactly is going to come out, when Ben steps out from the shadows and the dog spots him and rushes him, barking furiously. Luckily the dog doesn't appear to be good for anything except barking, and in short order the shotgun has been tossed down onto the gravel, and Snoke is on the ground with Rey’s knife against his throat and Ben’s needle against his neck.

“You’re a sick man, Benedict Solo,” Snoke gurgles, apparently unafraid even in what are clearly the last minutes of his life. Spittle flies out of his mouth as he speaks, and he smells of creamed corn. He turns his eyes to Rey. “Do you know what he did to all those women, young lady? He’ll do it to you if you’re not careful.”

“I’ve seen him do it,” she growls, leaning over him and staring into his eyes. “It was _beautiful_. If he did the same thing to me I would consider it an _honor_. And right now, I’m excited to see what he’s going to do to you.”

“And what are you going to do to me, _boy?_ ” Snoke sneers, glancing over at Ben on his other side. 

“Well,” Ben says with a smile, “I’m certainly not going to fuck you after you die.” And he sinks the needle into Snoke’s neck, pushing the plunger slowly with a steady hand until the barrel is empty. Snoke kicks and struggles but Rey and Ben hold him tight. The dog sits a few feet away, his wagging tail slapping noisily against the floor of the porch.

“What is it?” Snoke asks groggily when Ben pulls out the vial from his pocket and starts to suck it up into the syringe. “What are you giving me?” His words slur together, and spittle runs down his chin.

“Fentanyl,” Rey answers, letting go of the man to give the dog a quick scratch behind the ears. “It’s an opiate.”

“Very strong,” Ben continues, “which means there is a serious danger of fatal overdose.”

Snoke smacks his lips and moans, and Ben injects him with the second dose. Then he unscrews the needle from the barrel and carefully packs it all away in the metal case, which snuggles in Rey’s bag alongside her lockpicking kit. Ben sits on the steps and Rey sits on his lap; they kiss a little and enjoy the warm night, and eventually the dog ventures closer and Rey attempts to make friends with it.

“Name’s Hux,” she says, holding its tag up in the light. “Poor doggy.”

“He’s probably never been petted before in his life.” Ben reaches out a hand, which Hux sniffs and then sneezes on, turning back to Rey for more pets. “Guess he’s your dog now,” Ben says with a laugh.

“I guess so.” Rey digs her hands deep into the thick fur, softer than she’d thought it would be, and her heart feels warm and full. There’s a lot that’s hers now that she never thought she’d have.

****

* * *

“What about Kira?”

Rey wrinkles her nose, which amuses Ben. He can tell by the way she glares at him that she doesn’t appreciate it, but he couldn’t resist. The name reminds him of when they met, outside that McDonalds on I95 a thousand years ago. How badly he’d wanted to kill her, and how she’d ended up surprising him instead.

“Not Kira?”

She shrugs and pushes the half-empty, probably-cold mug of tea towards Ben. “It’s not _terrible_ , but I don’t know if it’s _me_ , you know?” Ben, on the other side of the kitchen island, grins and picks up her mug and dumps it into the sink behind him while another voice, deep and mellow, sounds through the speaker phone.

“She’s not _you_ , Rey, we talked about this. We just need a name for your paper trail. Ben will still call you by your name when you’re alone. But _only_ when you’re alone.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Ben says, rolling his eyes. 

“Okay, Kira then. Fine.”

“Good.” Ben says, relieved that the issue of which name will go on Rey’s new identification papers is finally settled. “Uncle Lando, what else is there?”

“Um…” the mellow voice on the phone responds, followed by a pause. “There is the issue of Kira’s last name.”

“Ren,” Ben and Rey say together. Ben is so surprised to hear Rey’s voice speak with his that he thinks he must have imagined it, maybe Lando said it instead, but no, she’s perched there on a stool on the other side of the island, wearing that old black cashmere sweater with her hair piled on her head and a shit-eating grin spread across her face. 

“Surprise,” she says, holding her hands up and waving them. 

There’s a warm chuckle on the other end of the phone line. “I gather that was unexpected?”

“We’ve been arguing,” Rey says, and sighs. “But if we’re going to pretend to be married we should probably have the same last name.”

“Wow.” Ben is taken aback and utterly pleased. They’ve been talking about this but the last conversation they’d had about it had ended uncomfortably, and Ben had dropped it. And even though he knew it didn’t mean they were actually married, having Rey say that she wanted her Social Security card to have the name _Kira Ren_ on it was really something. 

“And we’ll need a marriage certificate, of course,” Rey continues talking into the speaker phone. 

“Of course,” Lando replies smoothly. “We’ll need a maiden name for you then.”

Rey waves her hand like she’s swatting away an annoying fly. “I don’t give a fuck about that.”

“Okay then.” There’s the sound of typing on a computer keyboard through the phone, and then the shuffling of papers. “Ben, I’ll be sending all this to you next week, along with the information about the bank accounts. I’m still working out some paperwork with your county records office, but very soon I’ll be able to get you on the deed to the house.”

“Both of us,” Ben says, and Rey snaps her head up to stare at him. They hadn’t discussed that, but it made sense to Ben.

“Both of you,” Lando punctuates his words with the sound of more typing. 

“We sure were lucky that Professor Snoke moved back east and let us have the house for such a steal,” Rey says, winking at Ben, and Ben smiles. Lando studiously ignores her comment.

After a moment he says, “I think that’s everything.”

“Thanks, Lando.”

“I would not do this for anyone else,” the man on the phone replies, his voice growing more serious. “But you’re my best friend’s kid, and that means something.” Ben knows that there’s a lot unsaid; about Ben’s relationship with his parents, and his own crimes. Lando helping them makes him complicit, and even though the old lawyer has his own less-than-legal stuff going on, it would be easy enough for him to roll over on Ben, turn him in in exchange for leniency. But Ben knows he won’t do that. Loyalty, or something like that.

Lando’s voice softens again, and he says, “I need to go. Take care of yourselves, kids.”

Ben disconnects the call and keeps his eyes on the phone until Rey sets her hand on his arm.

“Hey. You okay?”

“Kylo and Kira Ren,” Ben says, interleaving his fingers with hers.

“Yes.”

“A marriage certificate?”

“It’s not real,” she says softly. He looks up and she doesn’t meet his eyes, gazes across the living room instead, where Hux is asleep on the long leather sofa in front of the tall windows, with the mountains in clear view beyond. He lifts their hands up and presses his lips against her knuckles, and she smiles.

* * *

Rey follows the sound around to the back of the workshop, ignoring Ben shouting behind her.

“It’s probably a raccoon or something! Come back to the house, I don’t want you getting rabies.” There’s the sound of a dog barking, and Ben shouts again, “Hux doesn’t want you to get rabies, either!”

“It’s a kitten,” she insists, picking through the muck of fallen leaves and mud left over from the rainstorm the day before. It’s misty, and a little dim, but there’s still an hour before sunset so it’s not like it’s dark. “I know what a goddamned kitten sounds like.”

“But you’re not wearing any pants!” They’d been carving jack-o'-lanterns and admiring the view of the mountains from the deck on the back of the house, and then Ben had started admiring Rey and he’d admired her so hard that her jeans had ended up hanging on the railing, and then she’d gotten a railing of her own, but as soon as they were finished she insisted that she heard a kitten crying and she went off to find it, slipping on the pair of boots that Ben leaves out in the breezeway before she heads out into the mud. 

“I don’t need pants,” she grumbles, rounding the corner of the low building, shivering in the chill. The ground behind the workshop slopes down, and Rey has to work hard to keep from slipping. It’s a pain in the ass but it’s worth it when she spots the little orange ball of fluff curled up beside the downspout that juts out from the far corner of the building. “Hey, baby,” she murmurs, and the thing cries again, but it doesn’t resist when she scoops it up and holds it against her chest. It starts purring immediately, and she giggles, sticking close to the wall as she rounds the third corner of the building and makes her way back to Ben and Hux, standing together uselessly on the front porch.

“See?” Rey said when she got close. “Kitten. Just a baby.” Hux sniffs at the bundle of fur in her hands and looks affronted. Ben shakes his head.

“How the hell does a kitten find its way up here in the middle of October?”

“Abandoned,” she shrugs. “Tossed out by the road, just got lucky enough to make its way up here I guess.”

Ben slips his arm around her and leads her towards the door. He tucks his nose into her hair and whispers in her ear: “Very lucky.”

****

* * *

“ _‘Proceed,’ I said; ‘herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchresi --’ ‘He is an ignoramus,’ interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels._ ”

Rey gasps and lowers the book at the same time the muscles of her cunt clench around Ben’s cock, and he pauses his reading. She takes a deep breath, and then another one, and a bead of her juice drips down into the crack of Ben’s ass and joins the damp spot that’s been growing underneath him by the minute for the past half hour or so. Ben’s arms and legs are numb, and he’s desperate to move, to let go of the log that tops the headboard of their bed - one of the few pieces of furniture of Snoke’s that they kept - to grab Rey by the hips and fuck up into her, but she wants him to read to her so he’s going to read to her until she tells him to stop, and not a moment before.

She stares at his chin and breathes a few more times, willing her body back under her control, then she holds the book up again and nods.

“Keep reading.”

“ _In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock. Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure it. He was too much astounded to resist._ ”

Rey loves Edgar Allen Poe, and ''The Cask of Amontillado'' is one of her favorites. She’s never explained her reasoning to Ben, but he’s sure he understands; it’s because she sympathizes with the one telling his story. Her life has been full of Fortunatos, full of men who smile to her face, who pretend to want to help her and be her friend only to turn around and hurt her. And she found a way to fight back, to rid herself of all these false men. Ben admires her for this, and he considers himself lucky to be the person she chose to help her rid the world of such men. He supposes he was like them once, but he can’t do that anymore. He only wants to be with Rey, who takes care of him and lets him take care of her. Like he is now, reading to her while she sits on his cock, so hot and soft around him; he’ll read until she’s ready, and then he’ll give her whatever she wants. 

“‘ _Withdrawing the key I stepped back from the recess. ‘Pass your hand,’ I said, ‘over the wall; you cannot help feeling the nitre. Indeed, it is very damp. Once more let me implore you to return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you all the little attentions in my power.’_ ”

Sometimes she ties him up when they do this, which is nice - Ben feels safe when Rey ties him up, he’s gotten used to it, knows that she’ll be good to him, and he’s learned to enjoy not having to think about it. But today she didn’t, today it’s just him and her and the book. He remembers the first time they did this when she didn’t tie him, how it made him feel as though she really trusted him. It’s difficult, being inside her without being able to move, just waiting while she leaks and clenches around him, waiting and reading and trying to pretend like he’s not affected by it all, like he doesn’t want to hold her down and make her scream. But that’s the point of the game, isn’t it.

“ _‘The Amontillado!’ ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his astonishment. ‘True,’ I replied; ‘the Amontillado.’_ ”

“The Amontillado,” Rey whispers, setting the book aside. She places her palms against Ben’s chest and leans forward, speaks quietly against his lips. “I’m ready to come now.”

“How?” He asks, already loosening his grip on the log.

“On my back—” and before the words are out of her mouth that’s exactly where she is, on her back with Ben on top of her, numb arms and legs be damned. He holds her wrists up above her head and drives into her with thrusts deep and slow. He allows his weight to press down on her. He used to be careful about holding himself up, afraid that he would crush her, but she started to ask for it, for him to lie on top of her until it was hard for her to breathe. She said that she liked feeling that he could hurt her but knowing that he wouldn’t, and Ben kissed her and told her _yes_ because he knew exactly what she meant.

They’re both keyed up after being joined together while unmoving for so long, but Ben does his best to draw it out, keeping his pace unhurried and slowing down even more when she starts to babble or when he feels her muscles beginning to tense up. It’s not until Rey says his name, repeating it over and over with tears streaming down her cheeks, that Ben finally gives in, reaches between them, and gives her what she desperately wants.

They lie together afterwards, chilly on top of the bedclothes but warm in each other’s arms. Rey dozes, her head resting on Ben’s arm as though it’s a pillow, and Ben traces his fingers up and down her spine. The kitten, who Rey finally decided to call Beebee (“because he’s a baby!”) curls up at their feet, but Hux stays in his favorite spot, just in front of the wood stove out in the living room. Ben thinks about how good it feels to touch Rey, and wonders what his life would be like now if he hadn’t met her.

****

* * *

“Do you love me?”

Ben is certain he’s misheard her. He flips his glasses back down from his forehead onto his nose so he can see her clearly.

“Do I what?”

They’re sitting on the long leather sofa together, each one leaning against an arm with their feet tangled together in the middle. Hux is asleep in front of the Christmas tree, which still has remnants from the gift wrappings strewn about in front of it. The snow is coming down hard outside, blowing in the chill wind, but the wood stove is working hard to keep the room warm. They share a woolen blanket that Kira’s friend Rose gifted them back in September after they first met at the farmers’ market, when she found out Kira and Kylo were newlyweds. They’ve both been reading, but Rey’s book is clutched up under her chin. It’s a new copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ that Ben gifted to her that morning; she’d read the book several times when Rose lent her her own copy back in the fall, and Rey had complained bitterly when she had to return it. She stares across at Ben, who takes his time lowering his own book.

“I was just reading this, and it made me wonder, I guess. Do you love me?” 

Nope, he didn’t mishear her.

Ben thinks about this question a lot. He thinks about it when he watches her sleeping, or when she’s cooking, or when she plays with the cat. He thinks about it when he looks into her eyes when they’re fucking, when he breathes in the scent of her cunt, when he tastes every part of her, runs his hands over her skin, slick with sweat when she’s hot, or bumpy from goosebumps if she’s cold. He thinks about it when she’s writhing on top of him and when she’s limp and senseless beneath him, when he's covering her scars with bruises and bites. He thinks about it when he stands in the shadows and watches her talk to men in bars and parking lots, when he watches her slice them up and his head goes dark and his body gets hot and they mark each other with blood and cum. 

There’s a short answer, and there’s a much longer one, but the short answer is easier to say. He can’t believe he hasn’t said it before, but he also knows why he hasn’t. It’s _hard_. But she’s asked, and he’s going to answer.

“Of course I love you.”

Rey drops the book to the floor and crawls over Ben’s legs, tucks herself under the blanket next to him. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before—”

“You don’t owe me anything, Ben,” she interrupts him, burrowing deeper into his side. “I just wanted to know.”

“It's just that it’s so much more than that.” He pulls his fingers through her hair. “I don’t think that _love_ is a sufficient word to describe how I feel about you. I used to tell my mother that I loved her, but this…” He shakes his head and looks down at her. She is chewing on her thumbnail and staring off into the distance, but he knows she is listening to him. “This is more. It’s better. It’s… all consuming. I can’t live without you and I don’t want to imagine a world without you. You complete me.” She laughs at the reference and pokes him in the side. “I’m serious though. You are the best thing to ever happen to me and I would do anything in the world for you.”

She doesn’t say anything in response, but he doesn’t need her to.

* * *

* * *

Rey is cooking dinner. Ben sits on the other side of the kitchen island watching her, glass of red wine at his elbow. She’s stirring the roux for macaroni and cheese; when they first were getting settled she used to buy the boxes of Kraft, a treat when she was a kid, but then Ben had taught her how to make “the real thing”. She loves it - the creaminess, the tang of the cheese, the crunch of the breadcrumbs baked on top - but she hates cooking it; most of all she hates the roux. So easy for it to come out lumpy, or for it to burn. So she’s very carefully watching the heat, and stirring, stirring, stirring, almost ready to turn down the heat and mix in the cheese when Ben asks his question.

“Do you want to do me the way… I do you?”

“What?” She asks, not turning around, annoyed at the interruption.

Ben, in tune with her mood as always, seems to understand that he’s asked his question at the wrong time, and he harrumphs behind her. “Never mind,” he says. 

Ben doesn't ask her again, but she thinks about it. She thinks about it over dinner, and then after dinner, as they stand on the front porch together drinking hot chocolate and throwing the ball down the driveway for Hux, the dog tripping over the kitten at every turn. She thinks about it later, as they settle on the long leather sofa and read in their opposite corners, until she can’t read anymore and has to take herself to bed.

She doesn’t want to, is the thing. She likes it when Ben’s awake, when he can see what she’s doing to him. She likes to watch him respond to her - to her touches, her words, and occasionally to her knife played against his bare skin. He’s still afraid of her, after all these months, and she loves that; his fear and his trust existing together, warring with each other in the same space. But she won’t be able to see that if he’s not awake. As she’s drifting off to sleep, she wonders if that might not be the point - if this is his ultimate show of trust. 

The next morning Ben gets up before Rey does and makes a pot of coffee. She can see him through the sliding doors from the bedroom, the same wall that backs the living room and leads to the deck. He likes to have his first cup out there, where he can look out on the mountains and, for the past few weeks, watch the early morning sun reflect off the snow. She pulls on his old sweater and a pair of woolen socks and goes out to join him. He welcomes her under his arm and kisses the top of her head.

“You’re not wearing much, aren’t you cold?”

She is, but she shakes her head and looks up into his face. “That question you asked me yesterday, when I was trying to cook dinner. Did you ask that for me, or for you?”

She can tell by the bemused look on his face that he doesn’t immediately know what she’s talking about, and then she can tell exactly when he puts it together because his eyes widen and his cheeks flush a deep red. His emotions are always so transparent, right there on his face, and Rey bites the inside of her cheek to keep from grinning. This doesn’t feel like a grinning moment, somehow.

“I, uh,” he says, before taking another swallow of coffee and pulling her closer. “Hmm.”

Rey hums too, and then goes inside for breakfast. Ben hasn’t answered her question, but he doesn’t need to.

She catches him unaware that afternoon, while he’s kneeling in the closet, rearranging his shoe collection. The ether does its trick and even though he struggles - really struggles! - he isn't able to pull her hand off his face. While he’s passed out Rey drags him onto the bed, and by the time he comes to he’s naked and trussed on his back with his legs pulled up to his chest, and she’s wearing his goggles, a fresh pair of nitrile gloves, and a leather harness with his favorite dildo.

“I…” he says, blinking up at her. “What?”

“I need to know which drug to use, and how much to give you.” She holds up Grandfather Anakin’s syringe and Ben’s mouth drops open. “Then you can go back to sleep and I’ll have my way with you.”

“Oh,” he says, pulling against the ropes, testing them, finding them strong. “Oh, fuck.”

“Yeah,” she replies with a grin. “That’s the idea.”

Ben talks her through it all, the tourniquet and finding a vein, selecting the drug (just a little morphine, not enough to hurt him), making the injection. As she pulls the needle out she wonders why they haven’t done this before, it feels so natural to switch places like this, and she enjoys it. She understands why he likes doing it to her, and why he did it before, too; it makes her feel powerful. Not exactly the same way that using her knife makes her feel powerful, that’s a different kind of thing for her, more primal - that is something she needs, but this is something she could get used to. By the time she presses the ether-soaked cloth against his face for the second time she’s almost looking forward to it.

Ben’s cock had grown hard when they were preparing for the injection, and Rey wraps one lube-coated hand around it and pumps it slowly as she uses her other hand to rub lube over the dildo, and then moves to pressing her fingers into his ass. He stays hard, and then grows even harder when she crooks her fingers up to massage his prostate. His face responds too, even out of consciousness, eyebrows drawn together, lips pursed as though waiting for a kiss. He huffs when she pulls her fingers out, then moans audibly when she slides the dildo into him a moment later. 

Rey thought that Ben wouldn’t be responsive like this, but she was wrong. It’s different from when he’s awake, yes - here there are no bright eyes, no begging, no tears - but his subtle reactions even through the blanket of the drugs are sweet in their own way. She fucks him the way he likes when he’s awake, long thrusts and short ones, soft strokes that drag against his prostate, harder ones that make his body jiggle with their strength. She fucks him and strokes his cock and when he comes his body seizes up and he even shouts, just a little thing, and Rey laughs, because it is delightful. She rubs his cum under her breast and on her hips, and she even picks up a fingerful and rubs it along his throat. The cut she gave him is long-healed, the scar barely visible, but it feels fair to mark him, too. The streaks that are left she rubs into the soft skin of his stomach. Then she unties Ben and lays him out on the bed, takes off the harness and dildo and cleans them off, and tucks herself in with him under the covers.

When Ben wakes up a few hours later he’s a little loopy, but he holds her close and tells her that she’s _good_ , and then he kisses her and slips his hand between her legs.

“Thank you,” he whispers as she comes on his fingers. “It was exactly what I wanted.”

“Anything for you,” she whispers to him later, when they’re both close to sleep. “Anything for you, Ben.” And she means it.

* * *

When Ben wakes up the bed is cold and Rey's side is empty, aside from the little plush arch he picked up for her back in St Louis. He gives it a kiss and sets it up on her pillow, then rouses himself and looks out the sliding doors to the mountains where the sun is just starting to peek over the ridge. There was a brief heat wave the last week of January that sent the temperature into the 40s and melted all the show that fell over Christmas, leaving the ground naked but smelling fresh. Now it’s chilly again, but at least there’s no longer any snow on the ground. Ben checks his watch as he picks it up from the bedside table and slips it onto his wrist; it’s 7:23, well earlier than the time Rey normally wakes up. He takes a piss and brushes his teeth before dressing - jeans, tee shirt, flannel, thick socks - and heading out into the living room.

The room is warm; it appears that Rey stoked the fire and put more wood on when she got up. Hux is napping, as usual, in front of the wood stove, and BeeBee is nowhere to be seen. There’s a fresh pot of coffee in the Diguo Belgian siphon coffee maker he’d had specially imported (Rey had rolled her eyes almost out of her head about it, and had insisted on making a donation to the local food bank equal to the price of the thing - sure, it was expensive, but it made some fine coffee) and a plate of bacon waits for him on the island; it’s slightly burned, and not quite warm. Ben pours himself a cup of coffee and chews on a slice of bacon while he unfolds the piece of notepaper tucked under the rim of the plate, and reads the note written on it in Rey’s scratchy, messy handwriting: _Come and get me_ , it says, along with a time: _7:15_. He’s not surprised but even so his cheeks heat and he bites his lip as he checks his watch again: 7:30. He allows himself a few more sips of coffee and another slice of bacon before he ties on his boots, shrugs on his coat, and heads out the door.

He’s greeted by the fresh scent of the woods, and the distant sound of a motor and tires on gravel. He stands on the porch steps and waits, and a moment later a battered red pickup truck with a light blue hood rolls into the parking area and comes to a halt. 

“Hey, Finn,” Ben calls as the driver hops out and gives him a wave. The man is dressed in jeans and an old Carhartt jacket, and wears a black watch cap over his hair, which Ben happens to know that Finn wears in tight little twists. Finn’s skin is dark and his smile is bright as he greets Ben in return.

“Hey, Kylo! Sorry to drop by so early but I’m driving over to Hartman to see my mom today and I wanted to make sure you got some of the smoked pork from last night.” He opens the passenger door of the truck and brings out a small plastic container and a plastic shopping bag. 

“I appreciate that,” Ben says, staying where he is while Finn walks towards him, setting both things on the ground in front of the bottom step, and then walking backwards several steps leaving plenty of space between the men. “Sorry we couldn’t make it, but you know,” and he gestures backwards towards the house. Finn nods sympathetically and Ben steps down and picks up both the container and the bag. Rey’d made a passing comment to Rose early in their acquaintanceship that Kylo didn’t like to be touched, and she and her friends had taken the comment seriously. Ben appreciated the kindness.

“Rose missed you guys, we all did, but depression’s a bitch, I know it. How’s Kira feeling today? How are you?”

“I’m good, thanks,” Ben says, setting the container on the porch railing and taking a look in the bag. “And she’s okay. She’s sleeping in this morning, I’m just taking a walk before it’s time to wake her up.”

“Good day for it.” Finn shades his eyes and looks into the sky. “Clear, at least. They’re saying there’s going to be more snow this week, though.”

While Finn talks Ben checks out the contents of the bag. “Carrots!” He says, ignoring the sheet of paper that’s been shoved alongside the vegetables for a moment. “But it’s February?” 

Finn gives him one of his glowing smiles. “Yeah, Poe grows them in his greenhouse. He has spinach and asparagus, too, if you like those.”

“We do,” Ben says, setting the bag down and turning his attention to the paper. “Like carrots, too. I promised Kira a while ago that I’d teach her to make carrot cake, so I guess now’s the time.” He pulls out the paper and sets the bag on the ground, looks at the paper and frowns. It’s a Missing Person poster, with a couple of photos of a middle-aged white man with a name and other identifying information printed below, along with the phone number of the Sheriff’s office. Ben recognizes the man; he and Rey had picked him up in the parking lot of a bar over in Dyer five days earlier. He’d called Rey a whore and she’d cut his throat so enthusiastically she’d almost decapitated him. The man’s demise had been wholly satisfying to both of them, and after he was dead Ben had made Rey come so hard that she’d passed out. Ben would never forget that man’s face.

He frowns down at the paper. “Another one? What is this now, three since we moved here?” Rey’d killed five men in that time, but apparently some of them had not been reported missing, at least not locally, which was just fine with him. 

Finn sighs and shakes his head. “I’ve told you, it’s normal for outsiders to go missing here every few months. They come here and then they run away without telling anybody where they’re going. Poe’s friend in the Sheriff’s department - the one who gave us those flyers, asked us to hand them out - he says this guy was in the middle of a contentious divorce, that he’s likely to lose his kids and house and stuff. Why not run away?”

Ben crushes the paper into a ball and shoves it into his jeans pocket. “We thought living out in the country would be safe. Kira’s going to take one look at this and she’s going to be worried, she’ll want to talk about getting a security system again.”

Finn shrugs and walks back to his pickup. “Security system isn’t a bad idea. But you tell your gorgeous wife that missing people aren’t anything to worry about; it’s incredibly unlikely that there’s a serial killer here. In Ozark, Arkansas? No way.”

Finn laughs, and Ben laughs along with him, waves as he backs his truck up and heads back down the driveway.

He checks his watch: 7:41. A bit longer than he’d like it to be, so he leaves the pork and carrots on the deck and hurries to the path that leads into the woods. A couple hundred yards in, Ben veers off the path and heads down the hill, towards a thick cluster of trees. In the center of the trees is a fallen log, and draped over the log is Rey. She’s on her stomach, with her ass in the air, BeeBee perched comfortably right on top. The kitten meows at Ben as he steps into the clearing, and only hops down once Ben’s given him a scratch behind his ear, bounding away to search under the leaves for something to play with. Rey is wearing black leggings and her boots and her winter coat, but it’s pulled up leaving her lower back uncovered. Ben tuts and runs his hand across her skin, then tugs her coat back down just enough to cover her. He walks around the log and crouches down next to her head.

“Hey, sweetheart.” He shakes her shoulder gently. “You awake?”

She doesn’t answer. He checks her pulse, and is relieved, as always, to find it strong. He pockets the small bottle lying in the dead leaves, and also the cloth clutched in Rey’s right hand. 

Back on the other side of the log Ben tugs Rey’s leggings down her hips. When he does, he laughs, and presses his thumb against the red gem that covers her asshole - the decoration on the handle of her favorite butt plug, and a message to Ben.

“You want me to fuck your ass while you’re passed out in the woods?” Ben inquires, pulling down his own jeans and pulling out his cock. “Okay.” He gently pulls out the plug, wraps it in the cloth and puts it back in his pocket. From his other pocket he takes out the small bottle of lube he keeps there, just in case. With just ether he knows he doesn’t have much time, so he doesn’t delay; he slicks himself up and, trusting that the plug did its job for Rey, thrusts right in. She feels perfect, as always, hot and sweet and tight around his cock. And there’s something special about doing it this way; her self-inflicted unconsciousness, offering herself to him out here in the woods. A treat just waiting to be taken. So he takes her roughly, not worried about her pleasure; there will be time for that later. When his orgasm is on the doorstep he pulls out, watching proudly as his cum drops onto her backside in heavy spurts. He rubs it all into her skin before tucking himself away and pulling her leggings and panties back up. Once they’re both decent again he rolls her over into his arms and carefully makes his way out of the trees, back up the hill to the path. 

Rey starts to squirm in his arms as he approaches the house.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he says softly, rubbing his nose against her forehead. “You awake yet?”

“Yeah.” Her voice is a bit groggy but her eyes are open, and she smiles at him looking down at her. He takes a seat on the step and helps her sit up on his lap. “Oh!” She shifts on her bottom, and grins at him. “You did it.”

“I did.” 

“Was it good?” Warmth blooms in Ben’s chest. It turns out that beneath her strength and her bluster Rey is very eager to please, and Ben thinks that apart from the times when she’s at her most feral, this might be his favorite mood of hers.

“It was so good, Rey. So good.”

She hums and leans against his chest, setting her head on his shoulder.

“You know that I love you.” 

“I do,” Ben replies, a little bit shocked but trying not to show it. She’s not said it to him before, and even though he knows that it’s true it still feels really good to hear her say it. She hasn’t killed him, and she hasn’t left, and she seems to know that he isn’t going to leave her either, not ever. He doesn’t think she wants him to make a big deal about it, though, so he doesn’t, he just holds her a little bit tighter.

“Just making sure,” she says then she yawns and stretches her arms up over her head. “Did you eat all the bacon?”

Ben laughs, pushing her off his lap. “I did not. Saved some for you. And Finn came by with some pulled pork and carrots.”

“Carrots! Time for you to teach me how to make carrot cake, I guess.”

“I guess.” Ben stands up next to Rey, gives her a kiss, and follows her into the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: There's a bloodless murder with needles and a drug overdose, plus consensual drug use, BDSM (ropes) and consensual somnophilia. References to slice and dice.**
> 
> THIS IS IT! Thanks so much to everyone for taking a chance with this fic and for sticking with it. I know it's a bit different - both the necrophilia and the relative softness - but it's pretty much exactly the kind of fic I want to read so being able to write it AND have other people read it is such a joy.
> 
> Thanks to galacticidiots for making the prompt on Twitter that led me to write this. I'd been thinking about writing a serial killer fic for a while, and had been toying with the concept of Ben as a necrophile for a while too, but it was that prompt that finally made me sit down and plot it out.
> 
> Thanks to flypaper_brain as always for being the best cheerleader and beta and the best friend a person could ask for. Her help with this fic, particularly with the characterization of Ben and really getting into his head, cannot be overstated. She's the best, she really is.
> 
> Thanks to the Reylo After Dark crew for being supportive and always listening when I have some crazy idea! I love you guys!
> 
> Thanks to lothcat, alantieislander, EmilyFiction and van1lla_v1lla1n on Twitter, who all made art and moodboards for this fic. The support and excitement you guys had for the fic early on was so great and really kept me going. You all are the best!!
> 
> And finally thanks to everyone who reads this, who leaves kudos or comments or slips into my DMs or who just took the time to click into the first chapter and check it out. I hope you've gotten something out of it, even if it was just a few hours to yourself. 
> 
> Now that I'm done with this I'm going to turn back to a couple of my older wips that I need to finish - if you enjoyed this I hope you'll consider checking them out! They aren't dark fic but I think they have similar characterizations of Rey and Ben (I do love this soft / feral characterization). I'm not sure which one I'll be finishing first but there should be a new chapter for one of them shortly!  
>  _  
> [Moss and Steel](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23174518)  
> _
> 
> Once upon a time, a young man was traveling from London to Nottingham when his party was accosted by a group of thieves.
> 
> The young man - Benedict Solo by name, son of the Constable of the Tower and nephew of the Bishop of London - knew something about thieves, having been born and raised in the city of London, but even though he'd heard about them he was sheltered enough to never have come face to face with one. So he was a bit shocked when the door to his carriage was wrenched open and a person hopped inside.
> 
> (A genderswapped retelling of Robin Hood where Rey is Robin Hood and Ben is Maid Marian. 19k words so far, 4/6 chapters posted)
> 
> __  
> [the day i take your hand](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22641889)  
>  Since her great-aunt Kira died eight years ago, Rey is used to being alone. She goes to work, rides her motorcycle to the beach, tends to her bees and chickens, and tries not to think too hard about the family that abandoned her as a child. Her small life is upended when Ben Solo, missing on a space mission for almost seventy years, arrives home to discover that everyone he knew and loved is gone. As he comes to terms with what is lost and what could be, Rey has to decide if she will continue searching for her long-lost family, or if she will choose to take a hand that will keep her closer to home - Ben's hand. 
> 
> (An apocalyptic AU based on the Queen song "39". 25.6k words so far, 7/12 chapters posted)
> 
> (I'm also working on a [Breylo Priestlo fic featuring nun!Rey](https://twitter.com/flowerofcarrots/status/1315314457845944320?s=20) so if that's more your speed you have that to look forward to as well!) UPDATE [I wrote it and you can read it here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26820286/chapters/65431726)

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment or kudos if you are so inclined, I love external validation! You can also [DM me on Twitter](https://twitter.com/flowerofcarrots) or anonymously on [CuriousCat](https://curiouscat.qa/flowerofcarrots).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [her walls around me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27353944) by [QueenOfCarrotFlowers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfCarrotFlowers/pseuds/QueenOfCarrotFlowers)
  * [home with you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27355450) by [QueenOfCarrotFlowers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfCarrotFlowers/pseuds/QueenOfCarrotFlowers)




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